My father worked in a food processing factory in the 70s (when I was a kid). One day, the gas-heated main steam boiler for the factory blew up, taking with itself a part of the building in which it was located together with some roofs of a couple of houses nearby (and the backup boiler was under a scheduled maintenance repair and got slightly damaged, too). My father was responsible for the machinery in the company, so he went to the rail and arranged for a steam locomotive to be pulled into the factory's yard (they had rails in the factory anyway), it's exhaust connected to the big chimney and they run a big pipe across the whole yard to the hall with the big autoclaves. It looked strange - in those times, there were no "nostalgy" trains (the ruling party would not allow such an indication of "good old days"), so it was the first time I saw a real big steam locomotive, and I could even touch it.

It took more than half a year until they repaired the boiler (and rebuilt the building), then they pulled the locomotive back to the rail station of the town. It was still there in the middle of 90s, when I used to travel to the university by train, on a side track of the station, providing heat for the shop where they repaired the "modern" diesel locomotives... (Next time I will go to visit my parents I must go to the station to check if it's still there...)

So, it proved to be of a very good service, even beyond it's original purpose - but, sure, generally, steam locomotives are not used to pull trains regularly anymore...

JW