I never knew that about the New York, although she wasn't at Pearl Harbor on December 7th.
I'm not aware of any other early preservation attempts in the late 1940's for American battleships, other than the obvious example with the USS Texas which today is the sole survivor of prewar American battleship design.
USS Nevada was just a random example of a Pearl Harbor survivor that was disposed of despite her historical importance, to provide a counterpart to what happened with Britain's own obsolete dreadnaughts over the first few years of peace.
We weren't much better at that time. Mistakes still happened afterwards, but we got better, at least for a time, after early losses like scrapping every last surviving 4 stacker destroyer.
That said, we've had some awful losses in recent years like the USS Cabot 15 years ago, if anyone wants to look her up and get frusturated.
Britain is hardly alone, I just view it with surprise that this area of preservation isn't even better off in Britain than it is today with wonderful museum ships like HMS Belfast in London.
Not even America saved an unaltered light or heavy cruiser from WWII (Unlike Belfast after her modernization in the 1950's, the USS Little Rock barely resembles her original self and the USS Salem is a postwar vessel of a design that didn't serve in WWII). That's despite cruisers occupying 5 of the top 10 slots for most decorated USN vessels from WWII and examples surviving in the mothball fleet for many years.
Yet the UK did.
Maybe it was not known as S160 in the States but over here they were USATC S160 Class, over 400 were allocated to the 4 regions. Our local heritage railway( Churnet Valley) had them runing down the line in LMS days. So it is appropriate that we have 2 S160s based here.
Well two things were revealed to me about Brit rail lines: one was that there were no clear legal procedures for settling insolvencies; so much of the equiptment was simply left on the rails. Second the governament funded the restoration as a way to hopefully jump start the local community. I recommend that readers watch the utube videos of these restored lines. Some are simply country garden trips while others connect with britrail and make trips every hour or two. They use several control systems for track authority including keys that release keys to the driver and thus allow control of the next track segment. Note in the videos that the train is directed by a spring switch and then waits for the approacing train to enter across the platform. I think the brits simply over enginerred the locomotives and thus they have survived. Also one could not buil a rail line without submittin detaile dengineering drawing before anythin was started.
Anyway go there it is wonderful and the details are simply too much to absorb such as why some rail cars have jeanny knuckle couplers turned backwards and not used. Also air brakes were not mandatory on all cars till after WWII.
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