Re: Restoration Philosophies

Just as a follow-up to what Rod is saying about the equipment being in use, I agree that steps need to be taken to insure that the USE of the equipment is practical, and safe for the restored equipment even if it means altering it historically.
I state this with some experience. I think it was back in 1992 and 1993 when John Craft and I did some photo specials, that Earl Knoob commented later that the wooden insills of the outfit cars did not really like being pushed on by a rear pusher up Cumbres Pass. Thus, to make those cars more user friendly perhaps some type of reinforcement should be made.
I would also add that its possible those cars almost never got pushed, just by the nature of the type of cars they were, meaning they were likely in work trains not near a pusher engine very often that would be backing up doing runbys, etc.
Earl can correct me if I am wrong but I am pretty sure he decided sometime after that the helper would not be pushing on those cars up the grade. This meant moving the consist around a bit, with the rider gon nearer the caboose, or some such thing. I think it also meant that when we did a 1997 charter they didn't want to back the train up on the hill. This 1997 run may have been the last run up Cumbres with a rear pusher for all I know.
Interesting discussion, and looking at it as a practical task, I think we all want to see restorations operational like the 0579 which was the best looking thing on the charter special!!!
Greg Scholl