At least Burlington had the good sense not to name one after Huck's runaway slave companion. That would cause some real problems today.

I wish them the best of luck, hopefully they have better luck and leadership than the FY. The plans and goals on the FY keep wandering.

It will be interesting to see which one becomes trundles down the track under their own power first, the Mark Twain or the Flying Yankee.

Going out into the stratosphere here, but since the original power plants are either missing or useless, why not retrofit a hybrid system? Show what can be done with an obsolete design that was far ahead of it's time using things that are needed but aren't entirely accepted yet.

If you go to the website published by hi-plains:

http://www.marktwainzephyr.com/

you will see the new owners did a lot of advanced planning and preparation. They chose to purchase a switcher with a specific power plant that will be transplanted into the zephyr, along with other control items. In fact the whole project seems to be an example of adaptive reuse as opposed to strict historic restoration.

I suspect the New England train set has a lot more ownership issues to settle before forward progress can be made.

This group would do well to talk with the Supervisor at New Hampshire Department of Transportation to learn about all the things they found were unobtainable (particularly truck and running gear parts) in the attempted restoration of the Flying Yankee.

PC

I walked through this train in 1988 when it was parked in the Chicago, Missouri and Western (ex~GM&O, now UP) yard in Bloomington IL for several months, we were told a restoration was imminent. It had been tubed even then, i.e. the coaches looked like a stainless steel tank on the inside, nothing wood, plastic or fabric just stainless steel sheet metal. I always wondered what happened to the windows and seats, which would be nice to have for a restoration.

Last I saw, the Zephyr in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry is in great shape and nicely restored (although not operational) so we do have a good example.

That train is looking extremely good. The interior looks great!!!!
https://spoonertrainride.com/mark-twain-zephyr/

Some inspiration and sources, perhaps, for the Fort Wayne Empire State Express stock?

Looks better than new (I never saw it new)

I hope their project works out well, but going from an engine that has almost no parts support to an engine where certain critical parts are getting hard to find seems like a risky proposition. And the EPA administrator is on the warpath against any pre-1972 equipment modernization to less than tier four. She reportedly stated at a recent LMOA meeting that the emissions from pre-72 engines are killing people. No info on how many of those people who died were double vaxxed and double boosted.

PC

I don't know why they left the hardest part for the end. I'm sure it was tricky shoehorning modern appliances into an 80+ y.o. car shell, but that will be nothing in comparison to installing a tall prime mover into a car that was designed before the 567 existed. There is a video on utube of a contractor machining the floor of the MTZ power car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgBWCUGq3mo apparently to help the 567 fit. Hopefully the top of the carbody won't need to be humped like the Alco DL109s that received 567 transplants.

What happen with its original motor truck and engine (scrapped?)

I believe they still have the power trucks (two originally) but they decided to use a truck off an EMD switcher so that they could use EMD traction motors, generator and electrical cabinet. The other truck is between the two cars and can't be replaced so they are using it unpowered. The Winton diesel is long gone as I heard it.