One of the things I am impressed with these folks is they seem to be pragmatic, they aren't it looks like insisting that everything be exactly the same as the original, ie that things be cast versus forged, that the tender be rivet by rivet identical and so forth. The point of this is to build a working T1, and if the paint isn't lead based, if the drivers use modern alloys, if there are 10 rivets/inch while the original had 9, if the valve gear is slightly different, if they have some kind of high tech monitoring of the systems on the engine, so what? If they get this off the ground and running we will be seeing something that is a working version of what once ran the rails. Rivet counting and authenticity is all great and good, but i kind of wonder how many projects in anything don't happen because of people fighting over 'what is authentic'. Drove me nuts in the car world (Yes, I understand that matching numbers and original equipment makes a car more valuable, but on the other hand a car is something made to be driven and driving a 60's muscle car with high quality disk brakes, a good suspension, added fuel injection, good quality radial tires,makes driving it more fun, and the purists may not like it, I might not be able to get top dollar, but I likely would drive the car until I dropped dead anyway and the amount it got or didn't get wouldn't matter to me). If these guys can build an engine that runs, that I can hear its whistle and see it roaring down the tracks again, none of that matters; and if compromising means getting it running versus searching for the correct rivets or wheels or tender and paying a ton of money that could be used for other things, compromise is the way to go
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