Cosmetic Restoration?

Now, PLEASE don't bite my head off for this, I'm only a newbie in the world of preservation!

I've often heard figures quoted for restoration of barry hulks into working engines, but I am curious as to the cost of a cosmetic restoration? One such as the restoration of GWR 2885 at Birmingham Moor Street, or your average museum piece.

Take (For the sake of argument) 4253 at the pontypool and blaenavon. It's not as heavily stripped as other Barry locos, but some TLC wouldnt go amiss.
http://onpontypoolblaenavonrailway.foto ... 12487.html
Could costs be kept down (And, if the loco is to be a static exhibit, reduction of the chances of vandalism or theft) by sourcing worn out parts such as connecting rods from other engines, and dummy items for more intricate/expensive parts?

Essentially, I'm looking for a ballpark figure for a cosmetic restoration. Anybody got any experience?

 

I think that this is a very pertinant question, especially given the problems with restoring ex-Barry locomotives at various public sites where they can become an eyesore very quickly until the money and the manpower is found to strip them down, lose all the bits, wait a few years and then put it all back together (well it seems like that sometimes!). The photo of 4253 is a very good example as 4277 looked almost exactly like that when it was at Barry. I was involved in preparing it to move to Toddington on the GWR for display prior to restoration (in fact we sold it and its since been sold again since) and I would estimate that its cosmetic restoration was relatively cheap. The biggest expense was getting a contractor in to remove the remaining asbestos (several hundred pounds) but, apart from that, it was just the cost of wire brushes, scrapers, sanders, loads of black paint, some buffer beam red paint, a pair of BR tank-side transfers and replica cabside numberplates and smokebox number plate for it. We had to work on closing the smokebox door too which didn't want to budge and we poured a great deal of used oil everywhere over the axles and inside the frames. So I reckon it only cost about £1000 (including the expensive asbestos removal) to have a relatively smart 4277 sitting in the Bay Platform at Toddington. We also purchased the missing coupling rods (£3000) but did not fit them. It helped that 4277 still had its chimney and we could have had a dummy safety valve cover made I guess. I'm talking about late 1980s prices here of course. We also bought some other spares for 4277 but sold these on with the loco and never fitted them. That said, with an ex-Barry tank loco in reasonable nick, it worked out quite cheaply and, if we had gone the whole way, with missing cylinder covers, cladding, fitting out the cab etc, I reckon for about another £6K in late 1980s prices, we would have had a very good looking static exhibit. However, that's all it would have been. Do I wish we still had it? Yes! Did its sale help to kick start our other locomotive (2807)? Oh yes! Should I have bought a whole row of them? possibly!

 

It depends on what you mean by cosmetic restoration? Are you talking about putting all the missing parts back on or just making it reasonably presentable to Joe Public? If you are going for the former, you are looking at pretty much everything apart from the boiler and (say) machining cylinder bores and other bits that are hidden. It's a finger in the air job but I'd have an initial stab at £250K. If you are simply tidying up and making a reasonable job of it - new cab, tanks, lagging sheets and other corroded platework made for you then my initial stab would be £50K. If you want/need coupling rods, etc, then add a lot more. I doubt that you'd find any 'worn out' ones. Doing everything with volunteers would reduce things considerably.

 

I've thought for a little while now about sprucing up some of the locos that despite being saved from scrap continue to rot away at certain preservation centres. If it's going to be literally years before any work is done, then a purely cosmetic job could be worth it with holes in the smoke box, fire box and tender side being patched with say fibre glass or some other material. Have a word with a local drama society and their stage designers might have some suggestions. After all they are used to producing sets that give an illusion.

Of course if you have a Duchess or Bulleid that is in a bad state, then some cheap material could be sourced to clad over most of the loco. \/

 

A couple of down-at-heel "Duchesses" (i.e. not 6229, 6233 or 46235) needing some serious TLC - if only!

 

Thanks very much for your replies, its good to hear from people who have 'been there, done that'.

What I had in mind was just making the locomotive respectable and not like a wreck with some paint slapped on. Things like grinding the rust off and protecting it from future corrosion.

I suppose the use of dummy parts could keep costs down a lot, although larger items such as connecting rods or boiler cladding would be harder to fabricate in anything but metal.

Welding in patches could be possible if some of the metal is in good enough condition, or failing that, fibreglass as previously mentioned. I noticed the SS Great Britain has her fair share of fibreglassing on the hull!

 

Straightforward enough to fabricate such items in the higher tech composites, but it might well not be significantly cheaper than doing it in metal, and I suspect doing boiler cladding might well be cosiderably more time consuming. Presumably scarce volunteer effort is better expended on something that progresses running the line. With rods etc I imagine the easiest thing to do would be to flop a mould off an original, but I rather suspect that a set of carbon fibre rods that were good enough to permit you to shunt a locomotive without taking them off would cost more than new steel ones unless you had a very large order...

 

I would suggest that a preservation centre might be better off spending the money on covered facilities to keep complete, out of ticket locos under cover, rather than of making a Barry wreck look a bit more like.

Surely, the priority with a Barry machine is to conserve what you have got, then start saving up for what you haven't. Spending money on superficial bits - cladding, cabs, etc., seems daft, when you've only got to take them off again when you start work in earnest.

 

I agree that it is much better to keep out of ticket and/or ex-Barry condition locos in a secure shed, where at least conservation is much easier; I think the key sentence in your second paragraph is "when you start work in earnest". In some cases the "when" is a real unknown, however much you plan for it. I can't speak for other loco groups or owners but, in our case, we knew that 4277 was going to be "in the cash queue" behind 2807 but we wanted it to look reasonably good "on display" and to act as a positive advert for the owning group, especially as, for most of its restoration life, 2807 was basically unrecognisable to most people as a steam locomotive. It seemed to work OK for us as 4277 was soon "spotted" by someone who wanted and could afford to buy and restore it so the rest, as they say, is history. Before anyone says it - I know, 2807 still looks somewhat unrecognisable as it is not yet reunited with its boiler (which is being worked on at Llangollen) but, later this year, things will be so different!

 

Here in Oz, it costs about $5,000 to $10,000 to make something look presentable. That £250K quote is wildly expensive to my experience. Whaddya get for that, a full mechanical overhaul?