Berkshire President posted:Kirk R posted:As a newcomer to the hobby I'm a bit confused by the OP's posting and some of the responses. Maybe there should be a separate thread, but if there were to be a top ten it might make more sense to be road name agnostic and just look at the engine and how it helped U.S. commerce, transportation, passengers, the war effort etc. in general. There are a lot of cool looking trains but many duds (I have the S2 turbine PW, caterpillar and Pennsy T1... all fell short but look awesome).
From a historical perspective I would put a higher priority on those engines that made a difference.
You're not confused. A lot of this thread has made little to no sense....at all.
It is not supposed to make sense, a thread like this is a flight of fancy, what people would love to save if they could. Looked at in the cold light of day (or with an accountant's or banker's heart) restoring and saving old engines is a fools errand, whether it was a big boy, a T1, whatever, since there is no profit in it, no practical reason to do so, the engines that have been saved have been saved because people wanted to save them for purely emotional reasons......even the corporate steam program at UP is driven by emotions, the public relations they get out of the steam program is all about people's emotions around steam engines, and likely if people at UP weren't emotionally invested in it to some extent it likely wouldn't exist, given that the PR value of doing that is not easy to measure *shrug*.
