Good question, unless some damage has occurred since 1996 the 497 ought to be an easier rebuild than 492. The 492 does have fewer years of service on the boiler but that does not necessarily mean she is in better shape. As I recall the 492 got pretty throughly stripped through the years she sat however by parts swapping things off the 97 she could be made complete. Im sure either the 97 or the 92 would need a complete running gear rebuild as well as the CFR part 230 boiler work. Years ago the D&S did a bunch of repairs down by the mud ring so the lower ends of the water legs may actually be in better shape than on the other K-37 boilers. Only a through inspection will answer that question however.
I tend to be opposed to using an engine up and then just parking her like what happened to the #483. Once an engine gets parked for a year life and events get in the way and it easy for it to end up parked for years and years. Look at how long 488 has been out of service. I would hate to think of that happening to the 497 or the 463.
A comment was made some time ago that the 497/482 trade was a bad deal for the C&TS. I dont think so. We did not have the money available to do a complete rebuild on the 482 which the D&S did before they put it in service. The 497 required less work though we did flues, a flue sheet, and bored the valves and cylinders as well as rebuilding the spring rigging over the years. Fortunately and importantly we did not have to do all those things at once, and it gave us 5 servicable engines so we could find time to work on small problems on the other locos when they cropped up. If you dont have enough locomotives, engines have to run when they are broken and then they really get expensive to fix. Having 5 functionable engines also gave us time to work on restoring #463. Had we held on to the 482 we couldn't have accomplished what we did.
For these reasons it is vital that C&TS get more of their own engines engines running rather than dissapate their energies by working on the C&S #9.
