567 Victorian 4-4-0 New Build

To be honest, I've given up on the Supporters Newsletters and rely more on the updates in Mainline and Driving Wheels, which do at least come out at regular three or four month intervals.

 

It's good to read in the latest newsletter that machining the bogie hornblocks is progressing after the thirty-month hiatus. I hope that the March newsletter actually being received in March is a sign of things to come and that the days of newsletters being released on a more random ad-hoc schedule are behind us. Nice to see some good news and actual construction progress being reported after the last few years.

 

Let us hope that the website will receive an up date soon as the last post was just before the Oct AGM. Perhaps, with the move of the B1 to Ruddington, there may be some further stimulus to the 567 project?

 

A website update has appeared......
https://www.gcr567loco.co.uk/news

 

Good to see the website update, perhaps the members will get some actual positive news soon?

 

Well, it has been three months since the last newsletter so the next one is due now-ish...

 

Still no further updates or Newsletter received......
Given the 2023 AGM will be approaching within the next couple of months, one assumes something is going to be sent out prior to that.

 

Income has dropped, however the expenditure has gone down to nearly nothing. Are you saving up for a big part or is nothing happening?

This is a loco that i think would be very popular, especially when you look at the interest around the T3.

 

My money (haha) is on 'nothing happening', given the progress reported at the last two AGMs. I agree wholly that this would be a real crowd puller when (if) it's finished.

 

From memory, the last AGM (not that I attended that particular one) was saying that there was something like £80K sitting in the bank at that time, which, given the 10 months since that date, seems to be doing SFA and not being spent on components which have presumably increased in price considerably since that date.
Compared with the likes of the B17 project, which I actually thought would fizzle out TBH, it's quite interesting to compare progess on other "new build" projects with the 567 one, which I thought would be a certainty to be built....

 

From what I remember of the last AGM, there was around £80K in the bank but the group were reluctant to order more components because 'we'd then need to spend money on renting storage space at Ruddington'. Well, they're going to have to do that at some point anyway as the build ramps up (assuming that it does) so it's beyond me why the bullet hasn't been bitten. £80,000 would buy a decent chunk of the locomotive, which even if it's then just sitting at Ruddington would still be a potent advertisment for the project. Meaningful visible signs of progress (other than the occasional desultory Facebook update along the lines of 'we spent Saturday marking up and drilling bolt holes in the frames') would probably do wonders for fundraising too.

After 2 or 3 years of attending AGMs which become sob stories about why the project has gone nowhere that year, my patience is becoming exhausted.

 

Yes, but the longer you can put the extra storage off the less money you spend on it. Storage costs can be catastrophic, look at the fate of the Binbrook Crab. I know absolutely zero about the project and its progress, but if you order up stuff that's not on the critical path and then have to spend money storing it, even refurbishing it if it sits around long enough, then there's every chance you'll wipe out any savings you make by ordering early. Whereas if you keep the cushion available then its there if you need money to resolve issues that are on the path. I don't think its a definitively wrong approach. But if they're not making progress on the critical path items that's certainly something to be concerned about.

 

I do wonder if the 567 group would consider purchasing a defunct, stalled, in pieces but largely complete (if it exists) RSH 0-6-0 Industrial engine to provide many more parts to get this new build moving forward. I know that the cylinder block and some motion is from such a source already, but all the other useful parts soon add up to a lot of money if made new.
Again though, the concept of breaking up an existing industrial steam engine will cause upset in some quarters....

 

Which other useful peices? Wheelsets, axleboxes and spring-gear are unlikely to be useful. The big RSH 0-6-0 locos mostly have boilers with steel fireboxes which seem to only manage 20 years from new before requiring replacement - most of the ones sat around demic are mainly sat around because the boiler is goosed.
That leaves you with some fittings, the brake cylinder and the buffers as about the only bits worth taking, and it seems a bit extreme to break up a loco for those.

 

Why break up another loco to obtain components though? Either do it properly or don't do it at all.

 

Then there's also the debate about whether taking the cheaper option now to get the loco into traffic is going to bite you in the backside in the future when components which were part-used when put on the loco become life-expired sooner

 

I don't think I buy that argument. The very first picture on page 1 of this thread shows that the frames already exist - at that point you have pretty well defined the maximum space you need. (The loco isn't going to get any bigger in footprint). So presumably whatever arrangement they had for rent then, it isn't getting substantially bigger (beyond inflation). If you were at the point where you had collected many small, valuable components, but were humming- and haaing about whether to get the wheels, frames etc - maybe there's a point. But that isn't the case here: provided you set about things in a sensible order, everything newly constructed can just be attached straight to the frames without increasing the space constraints beyond a small amount of working space around the project.

I've said it before, but worth repeating: the single best use of money that the "Beachy Head" project ever made was to construct themselves a building before they started constructing a loco. That decision has paid off multiple times over; and when the project finishes, the building will still exist as a valuable asset for future projects. I'm not privy to the arrangements around this project, or who is charging who for what, but if rent was being charged, surely an arrangement could be arrived at to construct a suitable workshop, with the land owner taking over that asset at the conclusion of the build in lieu of rent.

@Gav106 graph above suggests that at current rate of funding, this is a 50+ year project, i.e. it isn't going to happen - those driving it will die before it is finished. The only way to change that is to generate some enthusiasm around it, and the only way to do that is to actually make - and communicate - concrete progress on construction. Which comes back to an earlier musing on a different thread about the disfunctionality of many such projects. At some point you have to decide whether you are doing this because you want to see a loco constructed and in use, or whether it is just a hobby to keep half a dozen blokes occupied every weekend rather than go to the pub. If it is the latter - progress hardly matters, but don't expect someone else to pay for it.

+1

Tom

 

I think that's kinda the point. If you don't purchase the components until its time to fit them on the locomotive then they don't take up that much extra space, but if you order a bunch of parts that aren't going to be needed for 3 years, 5 years, whatever you've got to find somewhere else to store them and keep them safe and secure until you're ready for them.

 

With the success of the T3 No 563 it would seem to show that there is an enthusiasm and market for Victorian 4-4-0's which hopefully will feedback to this project. The presence of the B1 group at Ruddington will also increase the number of skilled people on site and so - hopefully this project will be reinvigorated.
The funding graph is a bit too short as the funding had built up to £20K + pa and the original costing was approx £ 250K, so a 20 year timescale....which started 5+ years ago.
But as others have said - communication is crucial to gain funding.

 

How realistic was that £250k estimate though? I'd doubt you'd even get the wheel sets alone for that. Every comparable new build of a standard gauge loco seems to be coming in at north of £1m, even with substantial volunteer input.

Tom