C&S No. 9 from the view of BN employee

The story of C&S No. 9 including its survival and short lived restoration to operation is quite fascinating.  Many have told of their experience with the engine, most significantly Jason Midyette's excellent book One Short Season.  

C&S 9 at Keystone, SD June 1984 from Eddie's Railfan Page

 I came across the following from the viewpoint of a Burlington Northern employee (the former parent company of the C&S, descended from the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy).  The 2016 comment comes from the Railway Preservation News forum.  He, as many, has strong feelings about what occurred with No. 9.  Being only a far-away bystander myself, I make no claim to accuracy in the events that happened, and I don't claim that the criticisms below are correct or not.  Still, I found his viewpoint interesting because it comes from an interesting angle.

"To add my two centavos worth... in the late 1980s, employees of the BN diesel shop in Denver tried to work with the CHS to restore #9 and her trainset (after we had been unable to get a standard gauge engine), to celebrate the 50th anniversary of this equipment being used to represent the Burlington Lines at the Chicago Railroad Fair. At the time we still had employees who had worked on the Clear Creek Division. (Brother, we had a guy that started in COMO two months before it closed.) BN wanted to find a way to write off the small car shop that had once been used to maintain the narrow gauge passenger cars, which had a drop table, overhead crane, air compressor, press, lathe, mill, etc. and this would have allowed it. (As it turned out, this was torn down to avoid paying tax on it.) 

"The unions made exceptions for employees to volunteer their time, and our diesel shop foremen were in favor of putting the equipment on standard gauge flatcars, which we could spot inside the big shop when we had room for an extracurricular project. This would have allowed deck level access from the shop ramps. BN liked the idea, and was going to underwrite it.

"THIS WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR CHS. Instead they spent trainloads of tax money to screw up this project. I especially appreciate that nobody in this thread has placed blame on Marlin Uhrich because it didn't work out. He is a very gifted machinist and boilermaker, who tried to reason with CHS BOD unsuccessfully JUST LIKE BN DID 20 years before. Many people HAVE blamed him just because he tried to make the CHS's bull$%*# fly.

September 29, 2006-Silver Plume

"Not only is Marlin a bona fide genius, but he is an extremely nice fella, and he is known to and respected by almost everybody with steam oil in their blood around these parts. I saw the whole #9 thing happen, and am very fortunate to have Uhrich Locomotive Works assisting me with my personal locomotive restoration. They have my complete confidence. If I am not successful, it won't be Marlin's fault, you can be absolutely positive on that !!!"

There are lots of heavy words in there towards the CHS.  Again, I'm mostly interested in the workings of the BN around the loco, not in casting blame.  

To quote one of the moderators over at Railway Preservation News, "As your moderator, even as I feed the flames, we need to be careful of this discussion… it can too easily devolve into blame and name calling… The Loop is a wonderful historic site, and a great tourist train… and can get better… I also note that History Colorado funds a large number of Colorado history projects... support that isn't common outside of Colorado."