Kind of a bummer CSR pretty well knows what they are doing and have some of the best minds in the industry on their team, hopefully their future projects turn out well. Seems to me like a bunch of don't touch Muh history folks won the time game and have doomed the locomotive to be stuffed and mounted for the foreseeable future. Toys of iron do not last long not being used and only become more expensive to repair as time goes on. The work they did this past year on the Rio Turbio railways locomotives is extremely impressive, I feel as though a real opportunity has been lost.

I have obtained a clear explanation of how CSR acquired ownership of the locomotive, and they do indeed own it. With this settlement of ownership, CSR has announced a major change of plans that includes leaving the locomotive in Topeka for static display.

My first impression was that this was a concession to the opposition CSR faced with their original plan to remove the locomotive from Topeka and use it for a test bed; and that the concession was made by CSR as a condition of them being granted ownership of the locomotive by the City of Topeka.

However, this was apparently an incorrect assumption on my part. As I now understand, all the plans announced by CSR are strictly up to their prerogative. They are completely free to do anything they want with the locomotive including removing it from Topeka and using it as a test bed. They are also free to simply leave the engine sitting in its partially disassembled state indefinitely. So, other than CSR owning #3463, I have absolutely no idea what will become of the engine. Plans can change and CSR as already demonstrated a massive change of plans concerning the locomotive.

An update of sorts: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... ocomotive/

This will all make better sense if you just go here and read:

https://csrail.org/

The only surprising thing to me about this is that CSR/SRI has some of the same principals as FMW Solutions -- which to me ranks as one of the 'obvious' people to handle the restoration. Evidently there are politics here that I don't entirely understand.

If it’s only $1 million to cosmetically restore it, I can’t imagine the cost to restore it to operation would remain less than $3 million.

In very broad strokes as I recall several of the principals of what now is known as FMW were actively engaged in making a deal wherein they would lease (or buy?) the engine, finance its return to service and then operate it. It was to used as part of an effort to develop a new age solid fuel that would replace coal as the engine's heat source.

They got a good ways down the road prepping the engine so it could be transported to the shop they had chosen to do the restoration when a local civil war erupted as to who actually held title to the engine.

IIRC that got pretty nasty, lawyers got involved and the folks wanting to save her from further years of stuffed & mounted neglect threw up their hands and walked away.

Good luck to them raising $ 1M for a new paint job !!!

Ross Rowland

Upon further thinking, are they factoring in the cost of relocating the engine into the cost?

I Saw ATSF 3463 With My Folks Years Ago, While Attending The Yearly LCCA Convention Back In 2016. That Was STILL When CSR Was Going To Do Up A Complete Restoration...

With Some Friendly Eco Modifications...

With The Lawsuits, Delaying Work On The Steamer...

Still Assuming The Current Goal... Whatever The Outcome...

Is To Still Move The Steamer To Another Location...

Many Had Want It Moved Over To The Great Overland Station...

The idea was to use 3463 as the basis for a 'speed record' attempt to reach 130mph, called 'Project 130'. This was based on a somewhat naive idea that 84" drivers automatically implied very high speed capability.

The 'science project' justification was to test burning of some kind of torrefied wood fuel. This of course was worked out extensively for 'clean coal' co-firing with bituminous coal, in pelletized or PC form, by a couple of decades ago; presumably the idea would have been to 'briquettize' to 2" consistent lump with exotic pressed shape to facilitate automatic firing. With the advent of the zero-net-carbon and now zero-carbon craze, anything involving torrefied fuel is a non-starter as far as development funding would be concerned, and I think that is the real reason why all the fancy plans have been abandoned.

I would concur that the moving expenses, and the cost of a shelter, would be a large amount of the stated budget. The CSR people did what I thought was a reasonable cosmetic prep of the engine before they thought they were going to move it.

"A Minnesota-based nonprofit, formed more than a decade ago to determine whether a modern steam locomotive could be built, is now being reorganized to care for and maintain the Santa Fe 4-6-4 it planned to use as a testbed." https://railfan.com/non-profit-reorgani ... -fe-4-6-4/