As a director of a Nevada Railroad Museum, we do operate some of our museum collection. We have an ongoing internal discussion about use, consumptive use, use of surrogates (non collection equipment), and revenue generation.

I would suggest that while we are aware and discussing the issues, we don't have the answers.

I came across this video yesterday. In the middle of it is an explanation of the history of Japanese building/housing culture and economics. It's interesting and disturbing, and this video also says a lot about the nature of our housing and building practices as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpxLLCdW_Gc

This channel does interesting videos that might be of interest to many of you.

There's a certain irony in all this.

We complain that we "don't get no respect," that our field is not taken seriously or seriously enough, etc.

Then when a place DOES operate "professionally," we grouse about not letting us "play trains."

The reality is that the most "professional" of museums and preservationists MUST maintain standards of curatorship and preservation, and those standards usually conflict sharply with, say, the "marketing department's" proposals and ambitions.

Here are some certain facts:
*You can't go out and secure a true replacement for just about any of the rolling stock in the RR Museum of Pa., save for maybe finding an ex-PRR GP9 or a certain "duplicate" K4s or GG1.
*There are museums that carefully select "duplicate" representatives for operation--for example, Tom Marshall had a couple Stanley Steamers he could/would fire up for demos at his private Stanley Steamer museum in northern Delaware. And other auto museums have "sacrifical" Model T's or the like that they can put in a parade, rent to a movie, etc. But that's not a true "museum" in the eyes of places like the AAM or whatnot.
*The B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore offers train rides, but if you look closely nothing in that regular train is an actual "museum artifact" anymore. Former MARC/PRR coaches rebuilt from sleepers, a heavily modified MARC cab-car F-unit, a NYC round-end obs loaned by MARC for its HEP generator, and a former Conrail/BM&R EMD switcher. All "expendable" as far as a B&O museum collection goes. (Yeah, they might stick on a GP9, GP40-2, or the like for special occasions--but not routinely.)
*Even certain places like the Baltimore Streetcar Museum have "strayed" from the original stated missions to acquire "expendable" tools--in the case of the BSM, PCCs from Philly and New Jersey (and Colorado!), in LARGE part because this gives them cars to give rides in while reducing the rather serious wear on the original, irreplaceable Baltimore rolling stock, and to give them a car or two to alter for handicapped access (still a work in progress). It would be heresy for them to alter an original Baltimore car for wheelchair/etc. access; it would also be heresy for them to continue to ignore that segment of their audience forever.

There IS no right answer, as Brother Hees points out.

It occurs to me that we are not that far away from the target date of Jack White's supposed wise/wiseacre answer in 1981 as to when the just-steamed original 1831 John Bull would be operated again: "Get back to us in 2031 and we'll talk!"