There are several places in the world where you can learn to run steam locomotives. Most are a single day program with only limited time at the throttle.
There are two good multi day courses.
For the best education I recommend the C&TS school.
The only place I know where you can run at speed with real passengers on a regularly scheduled service is in Wolsztyn Poland.
The throttle time on these runs 1 1/2 hours on a weekday service and over 2 howes on the longer weekend service per run.
http://www.thewolsztynexperience.org/home.php
For a variety of reasons this appears to be the last year they will be running steam service and running the engineers program.
So if you want to get this experience time is running out.
I am going over this fall and am most willing to help anyone out who desires to make the trip. I highly recommend it.
Stan