If I'm Al Harper and I'm faced with the legitimate possibility that one of my coal burning locomotives just started a 54,000 acre fire over a month ago and it's still only 45% contained at a cost of $29,000,000 and counting, you can bet I'm going to do all that I can to mitigate my risk. If I have a locomotive in the shop that has been dead for the better half of a century to be rebuilt, how could you not make the change to oil? $29,000,000... I'm sure that the railroad cannot float that kind of liability. Convert a handful of locomotives to oil to show the public that you're making a change is the best option. The only other option is to shut down the railroad. It's not as though it cannot be reversed to run on coal again later.
I don't go searching for leaded gasoline for my Model A's. They still operate. They don't have all original parts. If every Model A owner was looking to keep all of them completely original, all of them would be stuffed and mounted. Every single one. Is that what we're looking for? Don't make any changes at all... every single locomotive has different/new parts. That's what keeps them operable. 493 will have a fire in her belly again. Even a few years ago, no one would have thought that would happen. Sure it's not ideal, but if you want ideal, don't ride the privately owned railroad. Head over the hill to Chama and ride the state sponsored museum with the converted boxcars... wait that's not ideal either... what do we do now?