476 and the Same Old Ax.

Following this thread, I'm reminded of the old story about the ax. Except for several new handles and a new head or two it's still the same old ax.
The same could be said about "restoring" 476. I had a long chat with an online Brit friend who has been heavily involved in locomotive restoration projects there for many years.
He related to me that in 1930-31 the Brit gummit would not allow any new locos to be built. So the RR took a whole class of steamers, jacked up the whistles, and ran a new locomotive under them, and called them "rebuilds". And they emerged with the same "names" as before. (Here, of course, we use numbers instead).
My point is that there is historical precedent to removing all of the usable parts from 476 and then fabricating a new frame, boilers, cylinders, and anything else that needs to be built anew. And in the end, the 476 number could still be used.