How about a new subject heading as we have now changed to different subject .......

I still would like to know what it would cost to restore the K4 to operation as I asked on the previous page. Certainly this must be known.

The dead serious answer is "it depends who is doing it, for what ends."

"Give" the engine to the Strasburg Railroad, or the SL&RG, or Andrew Muller or Jerry Jacobson or the like, and let them do whatever the heck they want, with the assumption that there's little to no "historic fabric"? That's one figure.

Get government grants, administered by oversight by the likes of the Pennsylvania Historic & Museum Commission? A different figure.

Some Federal grant, possibly tied in with some pork barrel----I mean, "economic stimulus" objectives? Yet another figure.

Forge a new firebox? Forge a new boiler? Throw ten thousand welding rods on it?

Run it back and forth at the Museum? Run it on a short line? Run it at track speed under Amtrak auspices?

Personal WAG's: you might get her able to move under her own steam for a scant couple hundred thousand dollars or less, but I'm not too sure I'd want to be standing too close to her. The price to slap a new boiler that really comes to modern code, with welding and faked rivets? Ask the lads at Strasburg or Babcock & Wilcox.........

Look, the 1361 has had it's share of bad luck, much like the Maine Central 501's restoration back in 1997.

Well, I've seen all the hoopla, given enough determination you can do anything, lets just hope they can do it.

So, in the end, perhaps it's time to end the thread and say if you want a disassembled K4s, useless and in pieces, it costs nothing. If you want to may her operable, collect the amount required and hand her over to a capable, proven, steam shop, and let them do what needs to be done. The money is not wasted if it attains the ultimate goal.
You're either for restoration or against it.

My question of what it would cost to restore it to operation is on the condition of having the work done in the most competent manner possible, both from a business and from a technical standpoint. That would rule out anything to do with a government grant or stimulus money.

I ask the question because it seems to me that the prognosis for restoration to operation has become hopeless in the minds of most due to the failure of the latest effort. But that is water over the dam. Objectively, at this time, wouldn’t this locomotive be a relatively good candidate for restoration due to the enormous amount of work that has already gone into it?

Or is the recent discovery of the need for more boiler work such a showstopper that the locomotive has always been one of the worst candidates for restoration, and continues to be so despite all the work already completed?

So I am just asking for the dollar amount to finish the project, not about the probability of raising the money or finding a place to run the locomotive.

This is the part of this that people still don't seem to grasp:

1. It's all good money after bad, because...
2. The ORIGINAL ARTIFACT (the locomotive, as it first rolled out of Altoona) had a built-in incompatibility with modern operational requirements. "Fixing" this issue would mean that the historic fabric of the artifact will be irrevocably changed.

It's like taking a Model T and slapping an Ecoboost, air conditioner and satellite radio in it. It might look like a Model T on the outside, but it's not one inside anymore. Or taking a P51 Mustang and putting a turboprop engine on it.

Since it's owned by a museum, this is NOT something that's likely to happen (if they're taking good care of their collection, that is).

I think people just need to get over it, then write a big check to Williams Grove where there still IS an operating PRR steamer. Sure, it's not one of the popular ones, but it still runs (and for $110 YOU can run it).

I do not know where the historical fabric begins and ends with the potential restoration to operation. And I am not sure what “good money after bad” really means in this case. And personally, I do not care what happens to the locomotive. I am only trying to get some perspective on the physical problem of restoring the locomotive to operation.

So let’s just say that this locomotive, exactly as it exists today, were suddenly discovered for the first time. Say it was found in a quarry for instance. And say that a complete set of rolling stock was available plus a mainline to run on, all on an affordable basis. What would the prognosis for restoring the engine to operation?

It's not always about restoring to operable conditions Ron, that's my point.

Let me make an even simpler analogy (than the Model T one). Say you find the axe that George Washington used to chop down the cherry tree.

Well, you think "how cool, George Washington's axe! I'm going to use it to be more like George Washington. That'll be cool!". So you use the axe. In using it, you accidentally break the handle and replace it with another one, an exact replica, but one made in China in 2010. The broken handle is good for kindling though.

Now, is it still George Washington's axe?

Keep using it, next thing you know, the head slips off the handle and flies into a lake. It's ok, you can replace the head with a new one, in the exact same style, but again, made in China in 2009 (it's been on the shelf for a while, so it has a nice rusty patina to boot). It's ok though, because the new hardened steel head holds its edge better, and is epoxied onto the handle so it won't slip off again.

So now, you have George Washington's axe working great, you're chopping through trees like it's nobody's business. Plenty of firewood for the winter, and even better, a local school group came over to see George's axe.

Except... it's not George's axe. It's a Chinese axe made in the style of George Washington's axe. Poor George's axe is now partly at the bottom of that lake and burnt up with the firewood.

Now, a steam locomotive is a significantly more complex thing than an axe, made up of many more pieces, but this story illustrates exactly the reason why operation of railroad equipment is not really preservation.

That being said, there's an entire continuum of discussion about to what extent operational repairs still keep things preserved, and whether operations of equipment is important to the continued railway preservation movement, but I think it's important to understand the serious pitfalls, especially when you consider something as integral to a steam locomotive as its firebox.

This is also, pretty much, the extreme end of the positions in the debate, and not necessarily the one I agree with in all respects, but it is a legitimate position.

I'll say this though, in the real world, when this type of issue came up before (with PRR 1223 and 7002 at Strasburg), it ended up with the artifacts being stuffed and mounted in the museum that owned them.

It might shock you purists but we have computers onboard tvrm 630.

Ed,

The axe analogy is great, and I do understand the restoration issues surrounding it. I am in the camp that would oppose upgrading historic steam locomotives for more efficiency by the application of modern components. However, I realize that concessions are often needed and are executed on this principle. If a historic operating locomotive needed new flues or new tires, I would not object on the basis of these replacing historic fabric. But I would object to changing to a gas producer firebox or an improved exhaust system.

But this is the first that I have heard about this issue being the reason that the K4 restoration cannot go forward. I would expect that the operational restoration of that engine would have entailed the installation of lots of new parts. What is it about the boiler that has been discovered to create an insurmountable fabric issue?

I understood that the technical issue had to do with insufficient thickness of the top of the outer sheet above the firebox in that the sheet as originally built is insufficient for today’s codes. If this were replaced with a sheet of the proper thickness, despite the unusually high cost related to the Belpaire configuration, would this not solve the problem? Increasing that sheet thickness does not seem like much of a fabric issue in the whole scheme of things. What am I missing?

I think you're missing the disconnects between different visions of what the project K4 can be, should be, might be, will be, or can't be and won't be if and when it grows up.

Our British cousins have made some good use of worn out hulks as the basis for replicating new operating locomotives based on old designs. Since nothing lasts indefinitely, especially steam locomotives which self-destruct in providing useful service more than most devices and always have, that shouldn't be a forbidden potential use for this collection of hardware, and probably represents our only chance to experience the operation of the standard passenger locomotive of the standard railroad of the world, which in and of itself is noteworthy. With a clear plan andf good execution, many believe this alternative should be explored, at whatever the realistic cost is to execute it.

Or, just because resources have already been lost, many believe the project deserves no more allocated to it. Sure, it could be another collection of parts rustuing away somewhere, among many other started but never finished examples.

Or, perhaps go down the middle and bolt it together again and paint it up. Or go down another middle and run it on an insular demonstration track on museum grounds only on whatever low pressure it can legally and safely accomodate divided by 4.

If we try, we can probably come up with any additional number of ideas which all have varying degrees of practicality or merit or lack thereof, none of which matter in the slightest because it isn't our pile of parts.

In my irrelevant opinion, I'd like to see it turn into a tool for interpreting reconstructing a steam locomotive by making the process a publicly accessable and interactive one. I think the activity of making something happen and personally involving ones self in it is far more meaningful than looking at a cold, perfectly painted, inexplicably clean artifact on display. Years from now, if it turns wheels under its own steam or not at the end of that incarnation, it will have provided a lot of meaningful, tactile, and vibrant experience in the meantime.

dave

All I am asking is what it would cost to restore it to operation.

I know this question can be quite speculative with an engine that has not been torn apart to find the surprises. But with the amount of tear down, rebuild, and analysis that has been done to this K4, I would think that the dollar amount for finishing the job would have been accurately calculated and well known.

What everyone is dancing around here is the fact that this locomotive has already consumed huge amounts of money, with no end it sight. How many times can you go back to donors and ask for even more?

This thing has swallowed several million dollars already IIRC, and could easily consume that much more, assuming a source for such funds could be found.

It becomes a question of whether or not there are better uses for the limited funds available for restorations and even basic preservation/conservation of such artifacts.