I think it's a cool photo. I love that the location and and locomotive were identified.
I personally don't see a bow wake but I do see a little drift from the stack. If that gets any deeper it will snuff the fire out and you will only have whatever steam the heat in the boiler can muster to get to someplace drier. The bearing boxes on every piece of equipment in the train will need to be cleaned out and have new waste and oil put in, but that's not too far outside the realm of normal maintenance in this era anyway. I suspect that the first car may be a ice-reefer, so getting the cars out of the flood area before the contents spoiled would be a reason to risk sending the train through a flooded area.
I have no idea why a photo in a box a family photos would be so suspected to be fake. As to the man standing on the front beam, I assume that's a conductor or brakeman. The fireman would still be in the cab. The gentleman in the photo would may have gotten to that location by climbing out the cab to the running board. Assuming the cab even has doors on both sides, it's much easier to get forward from the fireman's side without having to climb past the engineer's controls, particularly for a man of significant girth, such as this individual. Once he made it forward he may simply not have been comfortable switching to the engineer's side. Or, as long as we are totally guessing, that protrusion in the water behind him may him the top of a switch stand and maybe he was peering through the water to see the alignment- at this point I am just making plausible stuff up. And as @smd4 noted, with the water covering those hideous drivers, this may be the best picture that was ever taken of that locomotive!
