Re: 492

492 was stored serviceable in Alamosa in 1966. At that time she had only used 30+ months on her flue time. There was a persistant story in the early years of the C&TS that the FRA would be very reluctent to certify a pre-1911 boiler and would never allow flue extentions requiring it to be reflued every 5 years. BTW this was an issue with the 463 at that time too. Later inspectors reversed this idea and of course allowed both 497 and 463 to operate without any other special conditions.
My stand on the 490's is they are hard on sub-standard track. The D&RGW ran them for years with no difficulty, we ran 497 for several years with out much trouble. If the track structure was up to snuff, the 490's should have no trouble.