Lew - those are great pictures for all the reasons stated by others - probably the best reason is spending the time exploring with your Dad. My two favorites are the one of you climbing up the ladder and the one of you bent over peering through the drive wheel spokes -- the latter is really very artistic -- great composition and shot by your dad.
I'm in no position to argue with Jack (aka hot water) - I would have thought that the last series of UP FEF's would be pretty high on the list of advanced steam power. I read somewhere that one of their attributes was a very high availability - in contrast to the low availability (i.e., spending a lot of time in the shop) that was an almost generic bugaboo for steam. Having had the opportunity to be 'engineer for a day' at the Roaring Camp and Big Trees RR, what impressed me the most is how much of firing and driving a steam engine is seat of the pants acquired skills - it would be hard to write a manual that captures how you actually do the job - especially the fireman... err, fireperson...
The preservationist instinct is double edged -- yes, sometimes we don't know what we had until its gone (isn't that a song title...?). On the other hand, it would be hard to imagine having railroads still under coal- or oil-fired steam, just from an air pollution point of view, not to mention fuel efficiency, etc. I went to undergrad school in Pittsburgh, PA (CMU) in the mid-1960's, when the steel mills were still in full force (though looking back on it, they were on the ragged economic edge). Pittsburgh now is much prettier city though the big downside was (and I think still is, to some extent) the loss of good, well-paying union jobs (that were also hard and dangerous work). This is a dilemma we continue to face as new technologies and new ideas replace older ones (we probably don't consider some of the downsides of those "advancements" as carefully as we should...).
All that said, I'm happy we do have a preservationist instinct (even if sometimes too late) - the resurrection of UP's 4014 is a fantastic example, as is the preservation of Grand Central Station (thanks, in part, to Jackie K. O.). Now if I could only find that can of buggy whip polish...
