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Thanks. I didn't realize that the Golden Spike locomotives had been modified quite that way.  It's an elegant solution.... space age technology solving the problem of excessive heat loss.It's a minor, invisible change that's important to us for sound, medically based reasons.  I know I am revisiting a thread that has been argued incessantly in the past.  But the question I ask is this:  What is the line between faithful restoration and changing the past to meet our standards of today?There's no doubt in my mind that the Jupiter of today looks like, may even sound like, the Jupiter of 1868 Promontary Point.  "My" own locomotive of that era is the Civil War General, in Kennesaw, Georgia.  I know enough about it to know that the original locomotive did not have a Janney coupler on the back of the tender.  I know that the original brakes were applied not by a Westinghouse air brake system, and that it probably took a greater distance to stop a train because of it.  I know that the big tank hanging over the drivers on the right hand side probably carried air inside it, furnished by pumps directly above it, possibly powered by steam.  It might make no difference to a kid seeing the engine for the first time- but it does make a difference to me.The static display has a sound system buried inside the locomotive- which hisses, sighs, and "chugs" like a real steam engine did.  I don't even know if the sounds are from the General itself- probably not, as the last time the locomotive was fired was in the 60's, in a centennial excursion run around the South.  No one wants to revisit the joy of traumatic finger amputation by a return to link and pin couplers.  No one should expect the operators of live steam to run the risk of asbestosis.  Nobody really wants to get hit by soot and cinders riding behind a steam locomotive... so we modify these locomotives that run today, to meet modern expectations using half century old equipment.  I wonder how far we go before these magnificent machines of yesteryear become models and replicas of the real thing?
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