HW, this is in response to your post over on TO including the statement "After more than 40 years of firing 4449...".

No matter how much you crow or pat yourself on the back, you ain't fired the 4449 (or any other engine for that matter) for "more than 40 years".

Add up all your ACTUAL left side time in any steam engine. Let each 8 hour period equal one day and each 6 day period equal one week. Allow 50 weeks per year, then let us know how many REAL years of experience you've got.

Or, should you prefer, add up all firing miles and let us know that total. We'll call each 100 miles one day and each 600 miles one week (again 50 weeks per year). That'd also give a decent approximation of full-time experience.

The guaranteed result? Your experience level is actually equal to that of a relative cub, three or four years I'm guessing.

There are folks accumulating real experience in the modern era but they aren't "weekend warriors". They're working someplace like Strasburg that runs a real steam schedule.

On the other hand there's a portion of the excursion crowd who make a few runs scattered over twelve consecutive months and call that a good year of experience. Guess who?

I'm sure you're familiar with the old T&E necessity called a "time book". They're awesome but there's a trick to them: you have to work consistently and record time in there to accumulate actual experience.

Sitting at home thinking about it ain't quite good enough...