It is fun to daydream about things like this. At the Sumpter Valley we like to dream about running trains from Prairie City-John Day, and hauling car loads of lumber with steam. But it is not going to happen. Even though lumber still makes the trip by truck, if the rails were restored (by some unimaginable scheme) the haul would be with diesel. Lets face it, steam is just too expensive. Whitepasser has it right: The vast majority of their passengers, and ours as well, do not care what type of locomotive is on the point. Indeed a lot of them do not know the difference. We had one passenger who, appon being told that the locomotive burned oil, responded with "I thought it ran on steam". I don't think he ever did grasp the idea that it takes a fire to make the steam. The point of this is that running all steam on the White Pass, and some other lines as well, would make no difference in income while drastically increasing the operating expense. This is the main reason the Sumpter Valley is restoring a 50 ton GE, a first cousin to the SP "Little Giant". As an historic restoration we are still committed to operating steam, but we need about 40 passengers per trip to break even and there are times when we do not get that many. Further, it takes about as much fuel to get up steam as it does to make a trip to Sumpter. There is also the question of availability. It takes about 5 hours to get our #19 ready to operate, whereas a diesel can be ready in minutes. While none of these problems are insurmountable with steam there is a reason the big railroads went to diesel. For them, for the White Pass, and for the rest of us, the final question is still the bottom line.
