>One member of the crew told me it was too expensive to run north of the museum.

Misinformation of the first order. The diesel trains not only paid for themselves, they also paid the annual power bill for the electric cars (and a sizable chunk of the annual liability insurance premium). And they ran for only six weeks a year, at that. What these "filthy trains" meant was that the "tram nazis", as one wag once put it, took a notion into their heads that they would wind up taking second fiddle, which their egos wouldn't allow.

>I heard a bridge was out by yet another member.

I think there are one or two small wood trestles south of Molena which have burned, perhaps three. Right now they're worried about where to dig up the dollars to repair the large one just [geographically] west of Bird's Landing, which is needed to get to Molena.

>I know it's a traction museum but it seems diesel and/or Steam may be a dirty word over there.

It was never just a traction museum (in many ways still isn't). It's simply a case of inferiority complex, real or imagined, and playing King of the Sandbox in middle age.