We're down. Go ahead, start kicking.

#1218 and #611 left the museum last week to go to Norfolk Southern's 125th anniversary shindig. (Look for a post later this week with some exclusive pictures from that event.) They were supposed to come back to us this week. However, Norfolk Southern is now claiming that there are some problems with the track leading into our rail yard and that they won't move the engines over that track until it is repaired. While the track in question is on their property and while they will take care of it, their time line for returning our bread and butter to us is somewhere around two or three WEEKS.

Our admission rates are reduced whenever those engines leave the premises, and with them gone for three weeks, the impact on our finances is significant. We lent those engines to Norfolk Southern for nothing. It was a goodwill gesture. We asked nothing for them, and took the hit to our admissions income for a week without complaint in the spirit of cooperation and gratitude. Now we're being asked to take that hit for two or three more weeks. This is unacceptable to us, but that isn't the purpose of this post.

This isn't supposed to be a rant about this situation, despite the tone of these first two paragraphs. This post is an apology to our patrons for what remains a terrible inconvenience. We are not so naive to think that people come to this museum to see anything other than those two steamers. So, if you're planning a trip to the museum this month, please call ahead to see if our glory girls are back.

For those of you who came to see them and were disappointed, please accept our apology. We posted the information on our website and on our front door, but the short notice most likely left a lot of people ill-informed about it until it was too late. We won't make excuses about that; that's not our style. We simply offer our understanding and humility.