Posted by Hank on Tuesday, May 23, 2006 at 1:38AM :
In Reply to: Arizona Rally posted by keithmerk on Monday, May 22, 2006 at 2:05PM :
I have exposed my wife to the idea. Her response improved to non-committal once I assured her that we would trailer the PW, and not drive it up from Tucson, at 45 mph, in August, through Phoenix at 115F, without A/C. Time will tell, don't count us yet. She has vague ideas about riding the steam train (www.thetrain.com) from Williams up to the Grand Canyon (we did the Polar Express thing with the kids last Christmas).
The GCRR people have now learned why it is that steam locomotives were dropped so fast by the railroads: they are really expensive to operate. The volunteer "labor-of-love" types slowly dried up as things got down to endless day-to-day operations, and they started having to pay people actual money to work on these beasts. For this reason they now run old diesels most of the time, with steam locos only a certain times.
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