Well, sure. And the maintenance needed for the Frisco Dec would
take, at most a day at any steam era back shop or even a well
equipped roundhouse.
The new boiler for the locomotive in Monticello took over 2 years to
be built (admittedly as a filler project) - whereas, whole
locomotives "in the day" were built in a few days. Restoration is
always a bit tougher as well - witness the photos in the Traintech
book of the Flying Yankee job where they substituted wood for
corroded stainless steel ( it had been kept damp for years by the
insulation and masonite) in order to build up to the width
needed. Some skills, techniques and materials are just plain hard to come by.
Then you have the issues of safety, health and pollution. It is not
unusual to see locomotive servicing sites on superfund lists. I
think a BN fueling and servicing area in Montana is STILL causing
problems after repeated attempts at mitigation. When you add the
issues with asbestos, OSHA, EPA, etc., things become a bit tougher
yet. Then you have the issues that made it impossible to allow the
Eureka to attend (as an operational entity) the Durango Railfest -
according to the FRA regulations (as a result of the Gettysburg RR
incident), the tubes have to be pulled and replaced, regardless of
how new they are or how little used they are. Now, at a well stocked
roundhouse, that job would not be expensive nor time consuming. The
exact opposite is true today.
It is now estimated to take upwards of $1M to get a steam engine
completely overhauled and ready to run. And that isn't one of those
hulks that you see behind a museum under tarps either.
The bottom line is that it costs a lot to complete such projects. So
as tax time comes, remember you can always use a tax
deduction. Also, this sort of thing goes a long way to explaining
the archive situation as well. museums now figure that, before they
accept a piece of equipment for display, they need $X per foot for
display track and another $x per foot for yearly maintenance and
another $x per foot for cosmetic restoration. It's all broken down
into a rather unromantic nuts and bolts dollars and sense
(intentional). That means if the BRHS had a Q E unit, the IRM would
need to have raised - before they even think about accepting the
donated locomotive - that first $X per foot (and a E-unit is quite long).
The same goes for archival space. Before ANY institution is going to
look at an archive, they are going to want money up front. And, it
is VERY rare these days that that institution will not have as a firm
condition in the contract, that there ARE no conditions. That is, if
they feel so inclined, they can throw the collection out, piece it
out or sell it. Without obligation. Once it is in their "hands", it
is theirs to do with as they feel. So if that institution already
HAS a press kit from the inaugural run of the first Denver Zephyr,
they will likely part with the BRHS "duplicate" (as an example
only). They also will require a yearly maintenance fee.
So, those who decry the absence of an archive, think about that, and
the costs of such a thing. And the potential for loss. There are
alternatives of course, but they take time to come together and the
right circumstances have to all fall together. But such things are
not impossible, they just require a lot of hard work a lot of time, a
lot of inventiveness and a lot of drive.
At 10:34 AM 9/21/2005, you wrote:
> > Photos of the damage show the corners of the cars involved torn back
> > about a foot. On sheathed cars, that would be a relatively easy
> > fix. With pre-war Budds, I'm not so sure. And, I'm not sure if the
> > museum has anyone available for shot-welding. This is one of those
> > things that can appear to be a small amount of damage that can
> > actually be quite expensive to repair.
>
>Isn't it strange how 'improvements' in technology actually make some
>things harder? 50 years ago it would have been relatively easy and
>inexpensive to repair that damage on the cars...
>
>Cheers!
>
>Jan
Bob Webber
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