Re: I wanta be an Engineer for a day.

I think the helper engine scenario is perfect, and might comply with yard-only running in accordance with the FRA issue brought up in the thread below (which all pertains to this one). The interest is definitely there, maybe not as much as in the UK, but I believe it would grow as word of mouth did the advertising. People pay lots of money to go up and dogfight in a WWII trainer and puke their guts out, so why not do the same after shoveling 2 tons of bituminous?
Seriously, people would be clammering to part with their money to experience a once-in-a-lifetime chance. The roads that already do it haven't reported much of anything negative. I also liked the idea listed below of using this as a payback for volunteer efforts after x amount of hours donated, a major carrot among few we hold out to these guys for all the work we get out of them exploiting their enthusiasm.