UP 844 progress

I know that. 3985 is a great engine with a great history. Union Pacific employees came together and made the initial restoration of it happen. That says a great deal about that particular engine. No UP employees will be volunteering there time to restore 4014.

Something to mull over....perhaps:

The Union Pacific is a publicly traded company.  I'd wager that a fair number of us own shares of UNP....which has been on a great run lately and recently split 2:1.

If enough SHAREHOLDERS (as opposed to "just" rail or steam fans) were to voice their concerns as to the shape/director of the current UP steam program, maybe someone up the food chain help return things back to the way they were before Dickens took over?

I (and my 100 shares) are at the ready.....

It is an absolute shame with what has become of the UP Steam program.  Nothing operational....lawsuits...and blaming the previous crew for everything....sad. 

Ha!  You should have seen the inside of SP #1744's boiler when it was removed from the museum in Corrinne, UT.  Wheelbarrows full of hard scale.  Removing a washout plug was like cutting a hole in the bottom of a jumbo bag of Doritos.

The perceived problem would be is who would be qualified to take over the steam program if the current team was fired or disbanded.  

I guess the question would be, Perceived by whom? There are plenty of "good managers" on the UP that actually know how to motivate their personnel plus utilize the "steam industry network" in order to gain information & direction. The UP management might also consider contracting out the whole steam operation, as NS and BNSF have done.

As I suspected, this thread has become a discussion of the UP Steam Department Manager instead of the locomotive. This subject has been beaten to death in thousands of posts here and on other internet sites.

None of us can know - FOR SURE - what is going on in the UP steam dept. Therefore almost everything posted on the subject is rumor, innuendo or opinion, not facts.

With that in mind, I'm going to close the thread now.