Un-rebuilding locomotives

Yes FR20 was a un-rebuild project but in the process you end up with a locomotive with very little original material which leaves you with the thought was it the right course of action as essentially 90% of the loco is err "new". I should know as I was working on the project and did all the CAD work.

For the record the only bits that could be from 1863 are 'some' of the frames (shortened when a tank loco) cylinders and some motion. Bits from its days in the steelworks include loco wheels, some motion and horn guides, the rest is all "new" - tank& cab etc got lost in the undergrowth @ Carnforth (I think?) and the old boiler is still around although not on the loco?

So was it worth it, well it was an interesting challenge, but with regards to "preservation standards" it becomes rather more dubious IMHO. Would I do it again - not b****dy likely, a new build is the way to go if you want to recreate the past.

 

Perhaps "de-rebuilding" might be better as it implies it was rebuilt first, then built back to original form, whereas unrebuilt could imply it was not rebuilt in the first place. I suppose if a loco was changed twice it could be rerebuilt then if it went back to its second incarnation it could be de-rebuilt, or would it be re-de-rebuilding?...

 

Hell knows. There's been a lot of it going round in the readers' letters sections of the various beanos of late. I've always called the Bulleids deserving of the name 'unrebuilt', and I intend to carry on doing so. And that is in the full knowledge that Bulleid may well have referred to them as 'unaltered' or 'original'. There were similar letters bemoaning the presumed derogatory nature of the term 'spam-can', but I always considered it a term of endearment in a similar vein to 'flat-top'. Each to their own is what I say.

 

Quite. "unrebuilt" as in meaning undoing the rebuilding process and reverting to the original state. It makes total sense for the Bulleids as a shorthand way of conveying both that the locomotive was rebuilt, and that it's to be reverted to original state.

 

Perhaps, based on fergusmacg's experience above , 'built' is the correct term.

 

That's the thing though, 'un' doesn't mean 'undo', it means 'not done'.

 

I looked up rebuild in a thesaurus. The only suggested antonym was 'destroy'. I can see the point.

 

I think you have the wrong target - after all, although "un" does not mean "undo", "undo" means to reverse what was done, as in "I do my shoelaces", followed later by "I undo my shoelaces". On that basis, creating a new compound word to describe the process of reversing a previous rebuilding is perfectly reasonable use of the English language.

 

In no other hobby would you have this amount of hand wringing over the use of the prefix "un"!

In the car world, a car is restored to its original specification. Why are steam locomotives any different?

"Restored" is a perfectly usable, grammatically correct and acceptable term.

If you put a rebuilt Bulleid Pacific back to its original specification mechanically, you have restored it to its original specification.

We could solve all of this nonsense by calling them Bulleid Pacifics and Jarvis Pacifics in the first place. Simples!

 

My pennyworth to differentiate between the two potential meanings, then I'll move on to more important things such as breakfast:

1. 'Unrebuilt'- refers to a locomotive that hasn't been rebuilt when other members of the class have.
2. 'Un-rebuilt'- refers to a locomotive the was rebuilt or heavily modified, but was reverted back to its previous condition.

The whole problem isn't necessarily the term that's being used, but the fact that so many meanings can be assigned to the same words. As such, you need to look at the context, and in the case of the Bulleids, the context is the fact that locomotives were 'rebuilt' (lets be honest, they have a redesigned middle cylinder block and screw reverser, so why not?), and others weren't.

Alternatively, we could use the Brighton parlance to differentiate between original and modified classes of locomotive, as follows:

MN-MNX
WC-WCX
BB-BBX

I don't think its as nice as rebuilt and unrebuilt, but there we are!

 

We could, but you have 60 years of naming history to overcome first... As "restored" encompasses both specifications, you do need something to denote the extra significance of undoing the changes introduced as part of the 1950s rebuilding programme, hence the suggestion of putting prefixing the class with "un-" for any locomotives restored in this way.

More to the point, if or when anyone comes out with the begging bowl to restore a Merchant Navy to original spec, I'm going to be less interested in what they call the process than in whether they have a credible plan for doing the job in the first place. For someone to object to the project on the basis that it should be called x rather than y would just be pedantry of the worst kind.

 

The obvious conclusion is that the English language does not contain a word capable of describing..... Hang on a minute - how about 'ReBulleid'

 

I think you meant "ReBulleid" I wouldn't want to be Bullied in the first place, let alone ReBullied!

Tom (hat, coat etc....))

 

With the Bulleids I have started using the terms "Altered" and "Unaltered" apparetly thats what Bulleid himself called his pacifics

 

Awkward semantic precedent though - you don't call an A1x Terrier a "Marsh" Terrier, even though the level of change from the Stroudley original is at least as extensive as between original and rebuilt Bulleid Pacifics - new boiler of a different design, for a start.

Or another one:

People call these "Beattie" Well Tanks, despite owing a considerable debt to Adams, Drummond and Maunsell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSWR_0298_Class#/media/File:LSWR_0298_Class_Beattie_Well_Tank_2.jpg

What Beattie actually built was radically different!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSWR_...ll_tank_(Boys'_Book_of_Locomotives,_1907).jpg

Tom

 

I may as well throw in my three ha'p'orth to the terminology debate. Bulleid Pacific's distinction between "Unrebuilt" and "Un-rebuilt" is too subtle to be useful. The trouble with "restored" is that it leaves unspecified which condition a loco is being restored to. It covers "restored to running order", "cosmetically restored for display", etc. "Restored to original condition" or "restored to original specification" may be a little cumbersome but is clear.

And anyway, as I have said previously, if ever the will and the funds can be found to restore a MN to what Bulleid designed, it would be better to do what he originally intended, using gears, rather than the chain-drive bodge that he was forced into by the wartime conditions.

 

Not necessarily. My 1955 car has been "modernised" with a screen wash (because it's a legal requirement and a good idea), as well as an extra set of horns (because a previous owner fitted them at some time in its history and I just liked them), however I removed the crude home-made demister which a previous owner had fitted, I also had the engine rebuilt with hardened valve seats and replaced rubber in the fuel lines with a type resistant to unleaded petrol. So it's actually "restored" to a hybrid of original condition, some but not all later modifications and some more modifications of my own. So is it really "restored" at all or is it just an old car, and does anybody really care? And where do you draw the line? Others have stuck a modern engine in, uprated to disc brakes, painted flames down the sides, chopped the roof... not what I would call "restored" but are these changes any less valid than my hardened valve seats?

Sorry to go off topic but I just thought it was an analogy that deserved a bit more scrutiny.

From a railway perspective I get annoyed by the use of things like posidrive screws and metric bricks, but I accept things like the use of metric steel thicknesses. Yet arguably, for a historian, the former are less of an issue since they're obvious, and the latter are more of an issue since they're not.

Finally, if a MN ever does get put back into something approaching its original condition, I'll personally be content to just use the name on the side of the loco.

 

Not really, when 'unrebuilt' is already in use to describe something not rebuilt, rather than rebuilt twice.

Most of the suggestions don't work, as what is being discussed is not undoing a rebuild, it's rebuilding again, whether to the original specification or not is irrelevant, it's still a second rebuild, hence why 'de-rebuilt' does not work either.

What about 're-spamming'

 

Or even 'canning'...

 

Original or converted back to its original form


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