7027 Thornbury Castle

If you are indeed correct, can you really blame him? Look at most locomotive owning groups and I think you'll find that most of them are the habitat of an aging population, most well past pensionable age. I for one wouldn't criticise any of them for wanting to fulfill their project in whatever time is left to them, particularly as, as some of us recognise that, despite the outcry, nothing of what still exists of 7027 is projected to be destroyed, so the parts could easily be reunited to create the loco should the opportunity and will be there in the future.

 

If they paid something like £200K for 7027, then the boiler could be £100K (Frames wheels axles etc worth £100K as spares or sell as a Star/Great Bear project). To retube the boiler etc another £100K.
To build a brand new boiler, around £750K. So buying now saves around £550K - very sensible financially.

 

the night owl will never be finished the amount of enthusiasts who remember steam is dwindling all the time and joe public will not be interested in donating to it

 

This argument has been put forward, almost since the start of preserved railways. But it ignores the reality that many enthusiasts now have only known preserved steam. Also the demographics are such that there are more (relatively) wealthy pensioners than ever before....and that will continue to be true.

 

That rather assumes that there is no more remedial work to be done on the boiler than new tubes - which would be fortuitous indeed! One wonders whether a full survey was carried out to assess plate thicknesses, corrosion, wastage of stays etc before agreeing a price?

The one certainty with boilers seems to be that the costs soon mount up when repairing them, both in materials and labour.

Tom

 

Hi Tom
Very good point - but I did say Retube the boiler etc so I do expect rather more than a simple retube - however all the reports have said the boiler is in very good condition and it certainly looked good to my very inexperienced eye. If it costs £600K it still saves them money.

 

As mentioned before on this thread, opportunity. It became available now and in buying it instead of a new build boiler it lopped a large six-figure sum off the project costs. There's no guarantee such an opportunity would re-present itself, so if you are to do it it's now or never. If you don't do it now you're locking in that extra cost and time. Whether one agrees with it or not (and I'm agnostic), that's not changed through the process or debate.

 

Sorry Phil, but I don't think that is true.
With the end of defined benefits pension schemes, relatively high inflation and mortgage rates, high energy and food costs, low interest rates on savings and below inflation pay rises, I think upcoming generations of pensioners will be much poorer than their predecessors.
This will have a big effect on heritage railways fundraising.

 

Hi Keith
Whilst I fully accept your points they are mainly due to Covid, Ukraine and politics and some are past their peak (energy costs are coming down now). My point is that there are more pensioners now than ever before, a greater proportion are home owners, mostly having paid off their mortgages and the value of houses has gone up steadily ( although possibly peaked now). Lots are cash poor but still wealthy....and the demographics indicate this to continue.
After all, who are filling those cruises, expensive railtours, afternoon and evening tea/dinner trains etc?
Also there are more heritage railways, increased track mileage and still expanding....despite the many problems.

 

We’re currently working on an MN boiler which was considered to be in excellent condition. We’ve spent upwards of £100K before we are anywhere near retubing it, by way of preparatory work and additional costs such as inspectors.

Not to mention the costs of the tubes themselves have been going up consistently.

Where do you get the idea that it’s only £100K for a re tube?

 

Hi Simon
Ref post #3446. I think it is safe to assume that the Night Owl group have done their sums and concluded that purchasing and refurbishing an existing boiler is going to be cheaper than building a new one. But that is my assumption and time will tell.

 

You have no idea if that's true, I'm afraid. They may have bough a lemon, they may not have done.

Either way, it will cost a significant six figure sum to overhaul TC's old boiler. By which point the potential for having built a new boiler may be closer in cost than you think.

 

The night owl project posits that it will be cheaper (and quicker, I think?). The point to which I was responding though is "So why the urgency to acquire 7027's boiler?", and the answer remains - it's an opportunity that's very unlikely to present itself again.

As it happens I've no opinion on the cost difference. To second guess the group's projections (and I've no urge to do so) would require knowledge of the net cost of the purchase, estimated repair bill of the boiler, the project cost of a new build and any effect of timing differences (the finished loco is ready quicker and/or it takes less project time). As others have said, in all likelihood the group's money/time saving assertion will be correct.

 

Its a bit like when folks bugger up steam rollers by turning them into fake showmans engines, the smoothner is always " But we"ve kept all the roller parts so it can one day be changed back into a roller".... like f--k it will be....

 

..... or it may not, you have no way of knowing - and some of these costs - eg tubes, partial restaying perhaps, will be common whether it's a new build or repaired boiler. I assume your experience does not run to buying sheets of arsenical copper, forming it and assembling it into a firebox, along with the cost of making the necessary flanging blocks if the don't already exist, either; personally I'm happy to accept that not having to do that will represent a significant saving. What no=one has really mentioned, either, is the potential saving in time.

 

Those tasks do rather depend on the current state of the platework though! New firebox throatplates, and entire new Bulleid inner fireboxes have been made, including having first to manufacture the necessary formers. So the fact that this boiler is old does not in itself mean there won’t be a requirement for such things. Only a condition survey and scheme of repair agreed with the boiler inspector would confirm what needed to be done. New half-sides is becoming a somewhat routine repair.

My gut feeling is that we won’t ever see either loco in steam.

Tom

 

Just how much money the 4709 project will be saving by re-using Thornbury's boiler will depend on how much it has cost them and how much of it turns out to need replacement. However, if (biggish "if") any money at all has been saved on the County project by re-using a few bits of an 8F boiler instead of building a complete new one from scratch, then re-using quite a lot of Thornbury's boiler will surely save considerably more.

 

Just look at the absolutely stonking cash savings made by the Patriot project by using components from other locos without fully understanding whether they would be ultimately suitable or not

Tom

 

Fair comment, but haven't they lost/wasted rather more on badly done work than on unsuitable second-hand parts?

 

A mix of both. If you read the latest report, the 8F wheel set for the bogie is now deemed unsuitable, but that means not only does it need replacing, but no doubt there will also need to be remedial work on the bogie itself to take a different wheel set with different sized journals. Meanwhile "The Tender Wheelsets have been inspected by an independent body and the report has raised a number of issues which we need to consider before making any decisions."

Unless you have a really clear objective (and I'd say the constant vacillations of certain new builds as to whether or not they want to go mainline does not constitute a "really clear objective") and good quality engineering advice, it seems you run the risk of needing to redo lots of work as conditions and knowledge change. "If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing twice" could be the motto of several such projects.

Tom