This is NOT criticism of you, Bryan, or anybody else. Just a thought...
Most everybody in this business is working with and/or running equipment in various states of oldness. Some oldness is REALLY old. Everything old breaks now and then. By Murphy's law, it breaks at the worst possible time. What do you do when it breaks? Well, the train has to get through, doesn't it? So you punt. If you're lucky, you have another one of whatever broke sitting around to be used as a replacement. But that's not always the case. So you resort to using whatever means is available to
just get the train through. It is not likely that whatever you use as a substitute will matter much to most people on the train. They just want the train to get through so that they can see whatever they piad to see. The D&S did what they needed to do to get the train through and cope with a case of broken oldness.
Now I must admit I myself am afflicted by a case of oldness. But I bet Russo has slightly more oldness than me! I'm not sure, however, which one of us is broken more often. Spare parts are no longer made.
Mike