Part of the reason is that Europe makes big events out of steam locomotives is that they never had such a huge movement to preserve existing locomotives.
Most steam engines in Europe ended up in the scrapyard, and by some fluke the engines ended up sitting in scrapyards for 30+ years, and required far more work to restore. So they tend to make a bigger deal out of steam ups then we American's because we actually preserved many operating locomotives, and many well preserved static locomotives.