Re: History and business

Very thoughtful, Rick. When you stop and think about it, the events that are occurring on a continual basis around Nine will themselves be written into history. History is not the events any more than the photo of a round rubber ball it that ball. The events that history is made of are continually being locked into the past second by second. These events are then recorded by someone and that narrative is history. This means all of history is subjective to some degree to that of the writer / narrator / photographer or whom ever. Someone once said, “history is the cruel joke the living play on the dead”.
The history of Nine is not finished. The events that are occurring today will be collected into some type of narrative by someone in the future. As I said before, the Crazy Horse paint scheme is every bit as prototypical as the paint scheme of 1902 because Nine IS the prototype. These things happened to her and someone recorded them by some means and now they are equally a part of her history. Since there are still events happening to her today they too will become a part of her history. In other words there is nothing we can do to this engine that will not become historically correct at some point. (In that regard all of this "fuss" is pointless!)
Our problem here is that "we" are attempting to freeze Nine into the past (1937?) and yet continue her "history" in the present. Certain aspects of these two goals are simply not compatible. Most of history is about compromise and today, as always, compromise is unavoidable if either goal is to be attained.
Derrell