Leap would be from the current 1903 to a whole new imagining of the world in 1910 - so some alt hist, but those not thrown too far off course would also happen historically.
2- My reasoning here is that the game got torn up by just ridiculous things happening and then players leaving. Just going forward won't fix the fact the early timeline got screwed up quite badly due to a "I felt like it" decision that had no bearing or purpose in IC resulting in quite a lot of arguments/disagreements (on my part at least).