Hope no one minds my repeating my message from Chile John's thread down here in this thread by Russ about 483, 492, and 497, but you guys are moving fast and it makes better sense here.
John, interesting coincidence that you should introduce a discussion of historic "preservation" and restoration" of railroad equipment. Just this summer I was involved in a study the Friends did for the C&TSRR Commission on such matters. My head still hurts from learning the complexities of how the National Park Service Standards and Guidelines get applied to the C&TSRR. The introduction to the study said:
"Since the railroad is a National Historic Site, any discussion of what to do with the railroad’s historic assets has to take place within the context of the preservation and rehabilitation standards and guidelines specified in the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties (i.e., “SIS”). This is the statutory title of the body of federal standards and guidelines that govern work done on historic properties of the railroad. Commissioners can access the full SIS at a National Park Service web site www.nps.gov/history/hps/tps/standguide."
So I suggest that anyone interested in learning what is permissible ought to spend some time reviewing that web site, especially the sections on "rehabilitation" which is the set of standards and guidelines most applicable to the C&TSRR. Furthermore, all such work has to be approved in advance by the State Historical Preservation Offices of the two states which enforce the standards.
What becomes immediately obvious is that these standards and guidelines have been promugated with buildings and structures in mind, not railroad rolling stock and locomotives, so, as you can well imagine, efforts to "rehabilitate" a historic C&TSRR steam locomotive can get a bit crazy. Fortunately and logically, FRA safety requirements carry a lot of weight with everyone.
I bring this up because others far more knowledgeable about locomotives than me have suggested eventually creating a sixth operational C&TS locomotive by placing 492's boiler on 497's frame since 492's boiler was outshopped around 1947, 497's boiler belly is suspect, and 497's running gear was done in 2000 and is in pretty good shape. I don't know how a 492/497 would be squared with the SHPO's, but I do worry about dueling regulators.
