Teresa,
I think what Eric is trying to say is that is that it isnt worth the museams money to invest in a irrelevant steam locomotive. And I believe the reason we have a 15 ton plymoth is not for display or re-creationism, but purelly for the ease of having a piece of heavy duty turn-key equipment. I also believe at the time the museam purchased and restored the plymouth, we had no steam locomotives that we could use to haul a passenger train. And in the years after that a reliable back up locomotive if the steam engine failed. Also, look at when we plow the line out for victorian Christmas. #10 can't handle that. Another reason to have this locomotive, even in the future when there are three steamers in our roundhouse, we aren't going to fire up all three of them every operating day. On work weekends perhaps but not every operating day. Now say one of our steamers takes out a train and gets stuck on an icy incline. are we going to wait 2 and 1/2 hours for another steamer to be prepped and brought out? No. It is much better for our visitors and crews if #52 can be turned on and in a few moments after the air resivoir fills up heads out to help.
# 52 was origionally purchased out of necessity, not for luxury, and is now kept for the reliable back-up it has become. and to further the point, steam is expensive to both aquire and maintain, and it's not worth our valuable time and money to invest in a non-prototypical engine when there are still so many of the roads origional locomotives left to recreate. I'm all for seing #6 v. 2.0 speed through Alna Center, but the apples aren't ripe for the pickin yet.
