Aw c'mon! Not all opinions are asinine, just those of the fellow who is disagreeing with ya!
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Seriously, though, unless a "Daddy Bigbucks" shows up willing to foot the bills, then you will need all those people, asinine opinions and all...
If your main purpose is to resurrect a single extinct engine, then you won't want to compromise on the design, so finding enough support will be rather hard. Sure, you'll have a core of fanatics working their a$$es off, but after that reaching those who are more casually interested will become gradually more and more difficult.
Now, if your main purpose was to sell to as many lokeys to as many clients as possible, then you have to start thinking about a standard, or "compromise" design, a good compromise lokey would be something that many people kinda like, even if it isn't their #1 choice, but it also has to be big enough to pull some tonnage, yet small enough, and cheap enough to be affordable. Something like a brassbound mogul or ten wheeler would be nice...many amusements parks, zoos and smaller museums with tourist lines would LOVE to have them. (If they, or you, could figure a way to finance them!)
Unfortunately, such an engine would probably not be of much use to tourist lines with heavier traffic and/or steeper grades...like the D$S or C&TS.