EBT Jim posted:Ukaflyer posted:It is interesting how we differ across the pond with respect to engines being restored back to steam and on show as part of our historic past.
Over here any steam engine returned to steam and is living and breathing again is a bonus to the ranks of preservation, no matter who the operator was, yet over in the US I detect the animosity against specific engines as being vitriolic just because of other personal views/feelings.
The VAST majority of folks here in the colonies feel the same as you Brits.
You just get the same small handful of vocal people on the internet grinding their personal axes and such. No one cares what they say.
Yeah, this response is quite fair. But that minority is awfully vocal. I once wondered if I posted about 4014 on, say, a woman's quilting forum, if one of the usual posters on that would show up with their bile in a jug, ready to spew?
UP's program is a corporate program. There used to be several of them but UP's is really the last one around (yes, some short lines have steam, I'm talking about Class I). So, this means the people involved were paid railroad employees handling steam for mainline railroads, a very rare thing over here.
In the case of UP, there's a lot of animosity in general. A lot of people loved the prior head of the UP steam program, Steve Lee. Many of the same people who loved Steve hate (or at least don't love) Ed, the current head of the program.
I guess this is normal and I won't go into the drama because quite frankly, I know it all third or fourth-handed, so God alone knows what is actually true there.
Suffice to say that some people accused Ed of everything short of Masterminding 9/11 and the extinction of the dinosaurs. Many train fans, myself included, simply couldn't have cared less if it meant that a Big Boy would actually run.
"Oh no," the nay-sayers cried, "It'll never happen, Ed will destroy it all." Well, we all know how that turned out. Yeah, the UP steam team came amazingly close to the promised run to Utah for the 150th anniversary of the golden spike. I potentially agree with the same nay-sayers who declared that 4014 wasn't running at full power (and perhaps was just in steam enough to allow itself to be pushed by 844 and the trailing diesel) on that trip, as they'd just gotten 4014 under steam a few days before they were to leave for Utah. I assume that was quite the white-knuckle trip for that reason.
"Oh no," some of the same said, "It's not actually running and never will." Well, we all know how that turned out. Just watch the video of the follow-on later trips. 4014 was quite handling her load on those trips.
I'm convinced that among the nay-sayers, several wanted the program to implode. They wanted 844 and 4014 to not run again, just so they could be proved right, that Ed was the devil incarnate, proving them right all along. All I know is 4014 is running now, and I don't see how anyone can disagree with that. Most aren't anymore and have instead directed their stream of bile toward the evil of not also returning 3985 to service again. Sure, it'd be great to see a double-headed 3985 and 4014, who wouldn't wanna see that? But given how long the steam team had to work to get 4014 running, an effort that nobody can say was a practical one, how realistic would it have been to immediately get the suits in Omaha to pay for a duplicated effort all over again with a locomotive they'd seen in steam countless times before?
Just goes to show there'll always be people who can't be pleased...
