Quite the contrary my friend.

I LOVE Strasburg. I love NCR 17. I like that UP is doing what they're doing with their steam program (because none of what they're running are one of ones).

I just like being honest about what we're doing.

If we want to play trains, lets play trains. There's real value in that.

If we want to be serious museums, be serious museums. There's also real value in that.

But we shouldn't confuse the two activities or use objects that should be used for one purpose for the other.

Ed, I'm familiar with an operating museum that has nothing other than one of ones, founded in 1966. If they had stopped running equipment from their collection, it's pretty clear neither the museum or the equipment would exist today. Given how long they have been around and the perhaps 100K+ people they have educated, it would seem they are seem serious.

Not to mention the role they have played in keeping the human knowledge alive. An example might be requiring operating staff to pass a rules test that is based on rules from the original road. Ok, so you can archive a copy of the rules. Yeah. So what. When you have to take the test, it forces you to study all the harder. When you have to APPLY those rules, you start to understand _why_ the rules existed.

Another is the passing on of how to maintain the hardware as it wears, or how paint was applied and signage painted. There are a million more examples. It is also of note that not only have all of the original founders passed, the majority of what you might call the 2nd generation have passed with knowledge being passed to some young folk who represent the fourth generation. This knowledge is extremely fragile. When a long time 2nd generation member passed suddenly recently, it was clear a lot of information was lost regardless the effort that was made to forward it along.

Cheers,

Bob