6100 Royal Scot

The job I am talking about was given to a contractor with a proven track record with the required accreditation. It was not one we could do ourselves as no member had the required certification. The finished job was inspected by the appropriate regulatory body and the work condemned. As far as keeping an eye on progress, it is possible for the job to go wrong without it being immediately obvious to the untrained eye.

 

i thought that there was only one standard for Mainline locos, MT276 or what ever it is called now, exactly what does this well placed source mean by satifactory , i would read this as meaning that as long as it passes inspection they were happy.
On the mainline with the higher speeds and everything else an engine has to be done right and that is what Crewe are doing an engine that isnt fit to run at 75 mph with a heavy train will fail sooner or later would Bressingham prefered it to have run as it was? and probally failed somewhere on the mainline and cause disruption to every other train , i wonder did Bressingham go into this not knowing the full impact of turning out a large engine that was up to mainline condition? then made things worse by not getting advice from people who did understand the pitfalls

 

Therein lies the pitfall that many fall into. If you contract out work, you must still oversee it. If that means regular visits to their works, then you need to do that. If you don't, then, although you perhaps might have recourse in law, you will regret it. We have some very good contractors in our industry but they can still make a mess of things. And they do. Even reputable firms can be cowboys at times, as well. If you are an untrained eye, then you need to be even more careful and consider paying for an independent assessor. On non-railway boilers, I've had 'reputable' boiler makers seal weld in tubes without expanding them, do the same to cover cracked tubes, fit gauge glass frames that were below the top row of tubes,fit level probes that did the same and supply overhauled safety valves certified for 110psi that still didn't blow at 140 psi despite a paper work trail that said they had been tested. I've had coded welders that weren't and best of all, a firm that repaired a boiler by simply welding a large patch over a crack and couldn't see what was wrong with the job.
* Always provide a specification
* Make sure it is followed.
* Visit the job regularly and vary the times
* Don't be afraid to ask questions. Act ignorant, if necessary. (I'm good at that!)
* Never believe the paperwork trail. It is worthless.

End of lecture.

 

As soon as it is mainline certified it can be passed over to the trust headache over.

 

This is my first post on this site and I suppose I should have introduced myself. In brief I am a steam enthusiast, and got involved when 60009 was at Lochty and went back main lne. I work in the offshore industry world wide these days.

In all the posts so far on this thread, people seem to be trying to apportion blame, but Steve at #903 has it right. It is all contractual.

As the "Client" you have the responsibility to specify correctly what you want. As the "Contractor" you have the responsibility to meet the specification. Any job must be managed or driven to ensure that both requirements are met.

The amount of responsibility that Contractor has, the amount of testing etc. that needs to be done and the amount of Client input is totally dependant upon the way the Contract is written.

In all this sorry thread about how a locomotive that should be on the main line but is not, there seems to be a lot of bitching, finger pointing and "I know more than you do" arguements. At the end of the day as Steve says:

The Contract seems to have been badly writen and did not specify correctly what skills were required to perform the work and manage the work.
Management seem to have been incapable of providing a suitable Invitation to Tender that correctly specified the work to be done.
Management seem to have been incapable of managing the job.
There seems to have been little or no acceptable Quality Control/Third party Verification.

In my line of work where we deal with high pressures, hydrocarbon fluids and gasses etc. this is simply not acceptable and we would not be allowed to operate.

So, why do the locomotive owners allow this to happen?

In my opinion the whole thing sounds like management incompotance for allowing bad engineering, bad fabrication, non-compliance with standards, bad selection of subcontractors, and ultimately bad financial manegment to allow things to have gone so far.

Not bad for a first "say hello" post!!!!!

McC

 

i fully agree with that, are crewe going to finish the work , then wrorry about getting paid by Bressingham
the answer might be that the new trust meet this additional funding and then bressingham give JH either the terrier or norweigen mogol as payment then he could always loan it back, or decide to place it on another railway bluebelle wouldnt mind another working terrier i bet, or as its got the wight bunker, the IOW steam railway ?

 

Personally I can't (well shouldn't) belive that Bressingham just want 6100 running regardless of how the work was done. I think that philosophy was applied during the 'restoration' from what I've read and seen on this thread.

 

I can't say that I'd be terribly keen to travel at seventy odd miles per hour behind a locomotive whose restoration had not been a 'Rolls Royce job'. I wouldn't be all that keen to travel at twenty-five behind such an engine either.

 

A well thought out and well expressed post.

 

Yep, to my mind that seems a fair summary. I only know what I've read on here about the matter, just looking at the job from a distance so to speak.

 

Everythinh seems to have gone a bit quietly recently, wonder whats being kept under wraps now?

 

The chaps working on it couldn't possibly be fixing the defects. They couldn't possibly be too busy to update us.
I feel ashamed to regularly work on the loco from which you have taken your username

 

Looks like a few posts have been deleted? As said earlier why not lock the thread?

 

Maybe the estimated 30k for the remedial work hasn't been raised yet.

 

Never mind young man. when you've been around engines for as long as some of us, you'll understand!

 

I have been around them since birth. I may not be as good as you at the ins and outs of how a steam loco works but i do know that the people who are sorting out the problems have better things to do than write on here every 5 minutes to say they have tightened a bolt. I'm sure when there is a big development we will know.

 

Damn.youv'e spotted the 2 mile square tarp we've bought to cover things up,actualy i do have a full time job as well but i will try to keep up,though to be honest i don't think a signed statement from God himself would'nt make a scrap of difference,you seem to have poison through you like a stick of rock.Maybe someone at Southall took your firing shovel away from you !

 

Railway Magazine as the latest update should be in steam for Easter , also the results of a independent inspection . Page 58

 

Is that due to the above post, or the loco generally? ;-)