I making this post since the Alco PA thread seemed to get slightly confusing (well at least for me). In the PA thread someone commented that they thought that the UP E9's no longer should be considered E9's since they have be re-engined. This has me wondering - What if a locomotive that never really left service was re-engined; would that not be considered normal for a railroad to do during an overhaul, especially if it would make maintenance simpler? I've always been of the opinion that a locomotive that runs; if the body and the trucks are right then thats good enough.

Thanks for your patience and answers.

Regarding model designations, probably the most practical answer is that if a locomotive that has been rebuilt/restored/reconstructed can still be supported by the original equipment manufacturers publications (specification book/operators manual/parts book/locomotive service manual/engine maintenance manual) then it should retain the original manufacturers model identification.

If it has been rebuilt/restored/reconstructed in such a way that the original equipment manufacturer's publications no longer are applicable to its operation or maintenance, then it probably deserves at least a "tag" added to the model number (i.e: Dash-3, "U", "M", or similar) to clearly indicate that there is a difference from the OEM original product.

But things don't always get done in practical or reasonable ways.

PC

This might be a very good time to open a discussion of 'correct' taxonomy for various kinds of preservation activity.

RESTORATION should be reserved for bringing back the artifact to some version of its in-service characteristics. That is the meaning of the term in the automotive community - usually being restricted as PCook indicated to 'factory' condition, and not as modified with aftermarket parts.

There is a gray area here, with something like de Witt Geeps exemplifying it: this being when improvements or modifications are made by the operating railroad while the engine is in service. In some respects - I am thinking in particular of the Reading T1s or Frisco 1351/1352 - the modified version is the one which would be 'restored', not the original. Likewise I think it would make sense to restore something like a "GP10" or even a CF7 in-kind.

REPLICA is reserved for a 'restoration' when too little or none of the 'original' fabric is present. As in the general collectibles industry, the term implies a precise reproduction, indistinguishable in external appearance from the original, and technically with all the original details reproduced. However ... also with reference to the collectibles industry ... it's remarkably common to find 'replicas' made with different materials, different internal construction, modern running gear, etc. If the term comes to be applied in the railroad-preservation area, I think a firm and unambiguous distinction between these two senses should be made, and the terminology formulated for common acceptance in this community.

There is, in fact, a term in the automobile field that describes what the proposed PA project is. That term is "Restorod" (with the sense that any 'mongrel' assembling of parts from different cars is either a hot rod or a custom). There is one version that preserves the external historical appearance, and another that shows off modern things like running gear while keeping a 'classic' body and general appearance.

Another general category is 'theatrical' construction, of which perhaps a good example is some of the Memphis trolleys, which are "restored" to operable condition, but in a way that makes them commercially suitable and by no means historically accurate. This is something, I think, that has often been discussed with respect to tourist railways, dinner trains, and the like, where reliability and customer satisfaction outweigh any real historical consideration ... but nostalgia and a sense of 'historic preservation' are clearly involved. What DO you call the sort of thing (in family-friendly objective language, that is!) that was done to Edwards Hall at Princeton, which got the equivalent of a tube-out with a whole new modern-code-compliant concrete and steel building assembled inside.

We should probably also have a term for stuff that pretends to be 'historical' but has nothing to do with preservation. I would put the non-locomotive incarnations of Thomas in this category, and those new-build 'trolleys' in some of the pasta restaurants. This should be a non-pejorative term, even if most of us think poorly of this sort of thing.

Ask someone into old airplanes.
Let's say you started off with the main spar and a data plate for a WW2 fighter, and used pretty much whatever you used to re-create the rest of the plane, either with original or reproduction components. When you're done, most people would consider it to be whatever it's supposed to be.
The term, "restoration" of course will come up, but mostly to denote the improvements you made to return it to that condition and to show how recent the work was done (as the newer, the better, when it comes to airplanes).
Just sayin', as it varies wildly among different types of restoration.
Heck, with firearms, unmodified is almost always more valuable then restored.

I've seen the term "restoration" mean anything from a spray paint job to a painstakingly cleaned work of art. Terms were codified for fine arts, adapted for small artifacts or paper or textiles, further adapted for architecture, and now we're at the point of worrying about which to use to describe our large mechanical artifacts? I'm pleased we don't have more pressing issues.........

If you're an academic, probably good and well, since you would have already come to terms with the reality that 1. everything you do is a compromise, and, 2. everything you do will have passed some form of considered justification, and 3. you lose something no matter what you try to gain by acting on your considered choices.

Preservation - how can we preserve what doesn't exist any more? I'm referring to the context in which what stuff we have accumulated is an integral and active and useful everyday part of the physical and experiential environment in which we live. By worrying about the leaves of each tree we lose sight of the forest. Do we want to preserve the remaining stuff by sealing it up in a controlled and inaccessible environment? Do we want to preserve the experience by working to provide a small simulacrum of the context which includes the stuff being use as it used to be when it was important? In that case, what do we do when the stuff we use needs to be repaired or maintained?

I'm less concerned about what term we use to try to describe our efforts than that our efforts are an organic part of a plan with a purpose worth carrying out. The criteria by which we judge our choices then becomes their suitability for the purpose of the plan's actions. All we need to do then is to know who we are and what we want to do and why. If we haven't started from that - not choice or action taken matters since there's no frame of reference against which to consider it.

Personal prejudice - context and experience to build a time machine designed for a specific story to be interactively enacted. If the trucks under the streetcar aren't the ones it was built with before it became a chicken coop before we put it back into service it isn't as critical as the sound, smell, feeling and appearance the riders experience. If the chemical composition of the paint, roof covering, and lubricants used aren't those used at first construction but work best to provide the experience, fine, provided it doesn't adversely affect the experiences we provide to tell our story. I like to demonstrate the in-service patina rather than an overly sterile like new appearance since those didn't last long and don't reflect but a tiny bit of reality. I like to retain things like tweaks in the frame or dings in the jacket that happened during historic in service incidents since they tell the story of those incidents. History is the imperfections, not perfections reconstructed.

At what point does a loco count as restored or reconstructed?

Depends, really, at what point of it's service life do you want to restore it as?

Yes, you CAN restore a RS3m or a CF7. For example, you can properly restore that RS3m to it's 1978 (or later) existence but not back to it's 1952 RS3 time frame.

When you have a modified or upgraded loco what is the end result with the time frame you want? That should help you in what to classify the piece of equipment as.

It's still not 100% in stone though. Take a chop nosed GP9 and restore it back to it's original owner. Yes, it's mostly all there as built but there was no funding or ability to raise the hood again. At that point it can just be pointed out it had the nose modified from what it was. No different than being at a car show and losing a few 'points' because you added dual exhaust but the rest of the vehicle is stock still.

"period of significance"

This is the definitive part of the restoration study and plan that defines exactly what part of the artifacts history will guide the process and specifications.

I agree with Dave here. IMHO, if a unit IS original, that is to say, exactly as it was when it rolled off the factory floor, it isn't authentic, at least as a piece of equipment meant to represent railroad operations from a certain point in time. Locomotives, even after a few years of service, routinely have their engines, traction motors, alternators etc. swapped with other units. The group rebuilding SP 9010 have uncovered that the rear engine, the one still operable, was originally from one of the six demonstrators (the units that looked like cab units) becasue when SP shopped them it didn't bother to put engines back in the unit they originally came from. The trucks they bought back from Europe (used on a ballast regulator over there after most of the KMs were scrapped) had gearboxes from several different units swapped around during shoppings by SP. And it only was in service for four years. So, had #59 been retired to a museum by the Santa Fe with a 244, original electrical, etc, the likelihood is that the engine wouldn't be the one installed in it new, and certainly not the traction motors, and truck frames, etc were probably all swapped about between engines when they were undergoing service.

I suppose it would be interesting to see a unit that had been stashed away unused the way some people did with Star Wars action figures in the seventies, but on the other hand it would only be an object of history from ALco, not from railroads.

The two hulks repatriated are both PAs. They will always be PAs. Doyles has been reconstructed to resemble a Nickel Plate PA-2, but nevertheless a PA.

The folks in Frisco intend to reconstruct their PA to resemble Santa Fe PA-1 59, which will have a few variations from how NKP 190 looks, but nevertheless is will still be a PA.

If they chose to reconstruct ATSF 59 to the appearance it had while working on the D&H, it would essentially look like it did when it came out of the shop in Boise decades ago as a PA-4, but nevertheless a PA.

You can make the same comparison with the Long Island FA HEP cabs. Some were built as FA-1s, others as FA-2s. Some kept their 12-244 prime movers, most didn't. Mine is an FA-2, from the day it rolled out of Schenectady in January 1951 to this day. Has its appearance changed? Yes. Someone welded steel plates over the opening for the wire grills and put a solid steel plate where the cooling fan used to be. Is it still an FA-2? As far as I'm concerned it is.

Why? Because it still resembles an FA-2. Show a picture of it to any knowledgeable person and ask them "what is this"? In the 15 plus years I've owned it, not one person called it an FA-2M, FA-2U or any other combination of numerals and letters. It's an FA-2. Period.

You still have an E9 remotored, your using its body. You would need to give it an added designation, but the exterior looks no differrent.

the DR-6-4-2000 from Baldwin used 2 differrent carbodies, one had the babyface, the other had a sharknose body, but it was essentially the same engine.

Lets just say you remotored the E9 with a PA engine, are you going to call it a PA?
Don't think so, I'd call it a remotored E9.

But for like the Reading railroad, they took some of their large 2-8-0's and rebuilt them into 4-8-4's, thats a total class and design change.

It's always been silly to say they rebuilt 2-8-0's into 4-8-4's. Firebox and part of the boiler only.

It's long been said that the one thing you really can't replace is the frame. Even the Department of Motor Vehicles goes this far--you can slap the most outrageous kitcar body on a car frame and it's still, legally speaking, a VW Beetle, Pontiac Fiero, Olds 442, or whatever.

The most obsessive diesel spotters go as far as documenting the frame numbers of various locomotives. The Reading 2-8-0/4-8-4 rebuild represents the furthest a "rebuild" argument has ever been taken. As far as "restoration," what about the SP 9010 Krauss-Maffei guys? How little of the original was left, and how much do they have to rebuild?

Consider the restoration/rebuild of the C&NW R1 4-6-0 No. 1385. This is a 1907 Baldwin product, originally built as a soak, or saturated steam locomotive. In the late 1920's it was converted to superheated operation. Not reboilered. The existing boiler was modified and the superheater installed. So, Mid-Continent, because the plan is to build a new welded boiler for this locomotive, could have gone back to the original saturated design but chose to rebuild the boiler and retain the superheater. Along with the new boiler, all of the other issues, in particular the drawbar casting, are being taken care of. It will be close to the "original" locomotive Mid-Continent got when they bought it in 1961, but a far cry from "as built".

If the C&NW had reboilered the locomotive, what would its status be regarding rebuilt versus reconstructed? Or is this difference only to be applied to preserved equipment? Mid-Continent's project is really no different that what the original owner would have done to keep the loco in service. So, is this a restoration or what?

Actually, quite a lot of the original was left, including the prime movers and transmissions (at least one transmission). About all SP did to convert the original to a camera car was rebuild the short hood to house the camera equipment, leaving practically everything beneath the frame and behind the windshield as it was.

About the only "reconstruction" the hydraulic guys have had to do is rebuild the short hood. The rest of the thing is "original fabric," as some like to say.

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You make it sound so simple. If it were, I would not have been working on it 3 days a week for the past 8 years. And neither would quite a number of other folks. I invite you to have a look at the web site http://sp9010.ncry.org and check out the condition of the cab when we got it. Did I mention that the SP removed all of the control wiring between the cab and the rear drive train? Somewhat over 3000 feet of #14 wire went into that. And how about having to replace both cab side walls because of the rust blooming around the spot welds? And the 8 missing hood doors and shutter assemblies that were removed when 100% of the #1 engine cooling system was replaced by an empty space and a 30KW diesel generator for the camera equipment?

And you say that the "rest of the thing is 'original fabric'". If that's the case, why did we bother to track down and import a complete truck from France? Could it be because there were no gear boxes on the existing trucks nor any very expensive cardan shafts to be found anywhere on the locomotive? And how about the fact that it has no air compressors, no hydraulic pumps (for the cooling fans) and thanks to the copper thieves in Sacramento, no radiators for the #2 engine.

And you say, "About the only "reconstruction" the hydraulic guys have had to do is rebuild the short hood."

This statement really annoys me in its attempt to minimize the effort. You obviously have no idea of the damage done to the locomotive and the work and funds that have gone into the "restoration" of the worlds only existing Krauss Maffei ML4000C'C'. Oh and by the way, the new short hood was constructed from scratch using nothing but shadow outlines on the locomotive and photographs. We eventually did get plans from Germany but the hood was 90% complete by then.

Howard Wise