Since people seem to be determined to misrepresent my words:
(1) please show me
anyplace where I have
attacked a specific person; I have mentioned specific people as those who would be expected to provide evidence of proper procedure if there were such a thing, but I don't see how that is an attack on them.
(2) please show me
any place where I have said that the Friends are
bad. What I have said is that nobody appears to be interested in proper procedures.
(3) please show me
any place where I have said that parts are
missing. What I have said is that we are lucky that none is missing.
Lets take several examples.
Lets assume that John Cole (no, he is
not a villain .. he is the hero of this pretend story) tells his automobile students to always work on a running automobile outside or in a well-ventilated area. For six straight weeks, one particular student tells John about working in a poorly-ventilated garage. The seventh week the student doesn't show up at all, so John asks the local police to do a "wellness" check. The word comes back that the student had died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Was that student unlucky the seventh week?? I would claim that he was extremely lucky the first six weeks.
Here in New England, lots of people partially heat their homes via a wood fire; in fact, our fireplace is blazing away as I type this. We are told to burn hardwood, because softwood, especially sap-laden pine, can cause creosote buildup in the chimney. Lets suppose I have a neighbor who tells me every day for six years that he is burning pine trees off his lot, thereby saving $250 / cord, or whatever hardwood is going for these days. The seventh year a chimney fire causes his whole house to burn down. Was he unlucky that seventh year?? I would claim that he was lucky those first six years.
Lets say there is a truck driver, say in Texas, who repeatedly starts across a railroad crossing without having room for his rig on the other side. He does that 999 times without incident. The 1000th time, traffic does not move in time, his rig is hit by a train, and people die. Was he unlucky that 1000th time?? I would claim that he was lucky the first 999 times.
You should see the pattern here.
What I have been saying is that there is a best-practices way to restore something historic. From the comments that have been made so far, there doesn't seem to be much evidence (or even belief) that those practices were used on the 463. If they were used, I dearly wish that someone would say so! But, I don't believe that the result of not having lost anything is an endorsement of the methods used. If best-practices were not used, then they were lucky this time, but I hope they don't stretch their luck, that future efforts do use best-practices.
