If you register, you can do a lot more. And become an active part of our growing community. You'll have access to hidden forums, and enjoy the ability of replying and starting conversations.

Current and Proposed New-Builds

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by aron33, Aug 15, 2017.

  1. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    10,440
    Likes Received:
    17,941
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Cheltenham
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    I knew you had a sense of humour buried somewhere in there! ;)
     
  2. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    10,440
    Likes Received:
    17,941
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Cheltenham
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    The thing with new-building coaches is invariably the designs envisaged are very wooden based, purely because most stuff pre-Mk1 was. And that's where things fall down. That's one of the reasons we don't have more restored wooden stock to start with - because finding skilled carpenters is a lot harder than finding skilled metal workers in our country. Sure, a few railways have managed to gather a cluster of excellence, but for your average grounded body you're still looking at 5-10 years per carriage and that's with a refurbished underframe from something else and an existing body.

    And it's not just working the wood, it's sourcing it. Salvaged teak panels are fine for replacement of bits and pieces here and there, and even restoring "new" carriages, but brand new builds? In the immortal words of Henry Crun, "You can't get the wood you know!".

    And realistically, whilst a carriage shed is highly desirable even if you've just got Mk1s, it would be unthinkable not to have a carriage shed for wooden stock. And that can be a major challenge in itself before you even get to building carriages.
     
  3. ross

    ross Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    May 18, 2017
    Messages:
    1,002
    Likes Received:
    2,477
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Titfield
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    No I do not currently volunteer
    Henry Crun was mostly right. You can't get the wood-unless you are willing to pay for it.
    With new-build locomotives, there wasn't really a need as long as there were plenty of 40 year old loco's with some life left in them. As time goes on, and the 40 year olds become 80 year olds, 10yr overhauls become more expensive, cylinder blocks wear out, boilers are more patch than plate, the economics shifted in favour of Tornado. The visionaries were willing to build new, to an old design, using certain more modern materials and techniques.
    IF- if preserved lines carry on the growth we have seen in the past 50 years, growth in length, service frequency, and quality of offering, and that is a very big IF. If that growth can continue, there may well come a point that the need for quality stock outstrips the availability thereof.
    If your railway needs to extensively overhaul 3 of its 30 mk1s each year and 2 of the 6 bogies need total replacement, at some point some bright spark is going to suggest that for the cost of restoring 3 mk1s we can new-build 3 -insert heritage design here- coaches. The next spark says "what if we build 12?" and the answer is 12 new-builds cost what 9 mk1 restorations cost.... you can see where I'm going with this. Build new, sell the mk1s to another railway, the public will love the new-old stock. Bingo!
    Modern cnc timber machinery is fantastically fast for repetetive production. If you were willing to compromise from solid wood to glulam for framing, if you were willing to compromise with veneered ply panelling, have components made abroad, wooden coach bodies and interiors could be built more quickly and cost effectively that many would believe.

    As a carpenter myself: there is some shortage of skilled carpenters in this country. It is not that the skills don't exist, nor that they are that difficult to learn. Apart from electricians(they have to be clever, you know) most building trades are looked down on. Certainly if you have sufficient brains to be a good carpenter, you'll be steered towards A levels and university, rather than trade school. The middle-class perception is that all builders are just like the groundworkers, or coke snorting mud monkeys, sorry, plasterers that they have seen in white vans. Not what they want little Timothy to be doing.
    In Britain many people seem to think that timber ought to be cheap, and would rather have cheap than pay for quality-even if the quality costs less overall, due to speedier construction with less waste. They might blink a bit at the purchase cost of materials, but then don't want to pay the same amount again for the skilled man to turn that pile of timber into a house extension. "Well guv, why don't you try watering it. perhaps it'll build itself"
    The skills are there, the timber is there, it only needs the money to put them together
     
  4. Monkey Magic

    Monkey Magic Part of the furniture

    Joined:
    Jan 6, 2018
    Messages:
    3,498
    Likes Received:
    6,845
    Location:
    Here, there, everywhere
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    No I do not currently volunteer
    It just needed a 9F and some mk1s to pull it out. :)

    This would make sense but look at the coaches built at Boston Lodge many of which are wooden. So clearly it can and is being done.

    If funders are willing to fund and pay for three Pickering Carriages to be built as contract work at Boston Lodge then why does that preclude it working for standard gauge?

    But yes, you have to have the infrastructure to protect them but you should have that even if you have a bunch of second hand mk2ds.
     
    ragl, ross and Paulthehitch like this.
  5. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

    Joined:
    Apr 6, 2015
    Messages:
    9,186
    Likes Received:
    7,226
    Gender:
    Male
    Occupation:
    Thorn in my managers side
    Location:
    72
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    No I do not currently volunteer
    But standard gauge vehicles are much bigger with all that that means, and of course up to now there hasnt been the need to build new ones, unlike on narrow gauge lines
     
  6. ghost

    ghost Part of the furniture

    Joined:
    May 29, 2006
    Messages:
    3,967
    Likes Received:
    5,064
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    N.Ireland
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    The other elephant in the room (apart from cost, availability of tradespeople, timber supply etc) is regulation.
    I don't know the answer, but can say a MK1, be built from scratch (inc. underframe and bogies) and put into service by a heritage railway without reference to the ORR / HSE / insurance company etc?

    Keith
     
    jnc, ross and flying scotsman123 like this.
  7. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    10,440
    Likes Received:
    17,941
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Cheltenham
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    This is questionable. If the aim was to increase the stock of 8P pacifics available for mainline use, buying one of the Merchant Navy rusting hulks would still have been a more economical of doing it. Of course that's not what Tornado was about, and it's brilliant that it exists, but it didn't come about because an overhaul or restoration was more expensive.

    I still don't see how, regardless of how many coaches you need, unless you physically need more coaches than there are Mk1s in existence, that building new makes economic sense. When you buy a Mk1, even with the very worst you're always going to get some bogie frames, wheel centres and axles, along with probably a lot more of variable quality. It might not be worth much, but to get built new from scratch would probably cost as much as the value of a whole Mk1 in decent nick.

    Being in the trade you're obviously better informed than I, and I'm happy to take your word for it that decent quality ply veneer would be acceptable (I still have nightmares about our ply-sided wagons - 2 years it lasted before peeling :( ) The price for the laminated wooden chassis for the IoW Oldbury coach currently eludes me, but I dont remember thinking "Gosh, that's quite reasonable" at the time. Hopefully someone else can remind me.

    Not going to disagree with much of that, I come from a family of skilled woodworkers, I still have my Grandad's and Great-granddad's wood plane and I think, somewhere, his cabinet-making clamps. In a rather catch 22 way, if I volunteered on a railway that had wooden-bodied coaches, I'd probably be quite keen on getting to grips with that particular field!
     
    MellishR, gwalkeriow, ghost and 2 others like this.
  8. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    10,440
    Likes Received:
    17,941
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Cheltenham
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    Two major differences; cost and choice of alternatives. Narrow gauge wins on both. Narrow gauge coaches are cheaper to construct, and there also aren't the equivalent Mk1s lying around that would be easier to do. The narrow gauge examples prove it is possible, not that it's the most economical thing to do in all circumstances.

    Yes well, as we know that's very far from the reality of the situation!

    Indeed, another factor to possibly make things tricky, especially with the proposals that occasionally surface here of a "generic vintage carriage", an idea which I detest far more than Mk1s (and I'm surprised a certain someone doesn't!).

    I should add, seeing as I'm being a bit negative about heritage coaches I am just as much a "carriage wibbler" as the next fan. I often attend railway galas on the basis of their carriage roster more than their loco roster, and I am the only railway modeller I know who gets more excited at the prospect of scratch-building another rake of Edwardian coaches than yet another locomotive. If I won the euromillions my dream project would be a rake of Toplights for the GWSR. But I'm just not convinced that it'll ever be more economical than endlessly repairing Mk1s, which is why I fully endorse what @Thompson1706 said about getting the most out of them; original moquette, wooden veneer panelling etc. which is the best we can reasonably hope to expect.
     
    MellishR, gwalkeriow, Steve and 2 others like this.
  9. ross

    ross Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    May 18, 2017
    Messages:
    1,002
    Likes Received:
    2,477
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Titfield
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    No I do not currently volunteer
    Agreed. But rebuilding a rusting Merchant Navy, at absolute best case scenario, gives you an operating Merchant Navy. All good and fine, if your business case reckons "another rebuilt Bulleid" is a USP

    Again, Agreed. But if you buy a mk1, you get yet another mk1. They aren't that bad I suppose, but they are just the same as every other line. As time goes on, the total number of mk1's will decrease, and *IF* growth in the sector continues, the demand will increase. "We have 10 mk1's. We need 2 more coaches-ergo, we need 2 more mk1's.
    Should there come a point where the value of your 18 good mk1's would buy 2 dozen nice looking, well presented, appropriate for your line/locomotives/other factors new build coaches, which might be the USP you want, that might be the point at which "to get built new from scratch would probably cost as much as the value of a whole Mk1 in decent nick", becomes "to get built new from scratch would only cost as much as the value of a whole Mk1 in decent nick and we'd like to do it"

    Marine ply or WBP? Did you seal the edges, guv? You always got to seal the edges.....cor blimey, if I had a pound fer every blahblah

    You might have thought it reasonable if you were comparing it to the cost of full section, straight grain, free-of-heart-centre oak.
     
  10. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    10,440
    Likes Received:
    17,941
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Cheltenham
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    Of course, but we were talking about the economics of new builds vs restorations per se, not one locomotive against another.



    I think this is the crux of it, I just cannot forsee any circumstances where even a basket case Mk1 will be more expensive to restore than a wooden-bodied coach of similar capacity would be to restore, let alone build new.

    If we ran out of coaches entirely then the cost of a brand new Mk1 vs the cost of a brand new heritage coach might be marginal enough that you'd pay a bit more to get something nicer, but I really can't see that situation arising.

    Leaving aside labour costs, I'm really struggling to imagine spending more than £100-£150k on a basket case Mk1. With reference to @Monkey Magic 's narrow gauge comparisons, I think some FfR new build carriages cost more than that, let alone something in standard gauge.



    Yeah I know I know, probably WBP, won't make that mistake again etc. etc. Hence I bow to your knowledge of suitable ply being up to the job, as long as you've got someone suitable buying the right spec! :)



    Possibly, but again that's not the comparison were making, the relevant one is between that and the cost of restoring a "basket case" Mk1, and I remain to be convinced that that could *ever* exceed the cost of a new-build coach of any sort, wooden bodied or otherwise.
     
  11. ross

    ross Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    May 18, 2017
    Messages:
    1,002
    Likes Received:
    2,477
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Titfield
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    No I do not currently volunteer
    We're going to have to move this to the rolling stock thread!
    The very high cost of restoration on wooden things is frequently that old, steam bent ash/oak framing, when neglected, tends to straighten itself out. Rot starts in joints, and spreads. The hide glues used to fix joints together, are very difficult to separate without doing more damage. It tends to be very slow and expensive work if you want to retain as much of the original timber as possible. Scarfing in new timber to repair rotted framework without distorting the rest is also fraught-you need to put clamps exactly where you need to work... I'm a bit of a heathen, but I've been there enough times to know it is more cost effective and a better long term solution to replace rather than repair....But it is certainly less costly to make a new copy than repair a badly decayed original.
    I have no idea how many mk1TSO's I've travelled in-I find them dull and unmemorable. I do still recall being completely fascinated, aged 4-5, with the leather strap to lower the droplight on the Bluebell Railway, and compartment stock on the SVR aged 7, (and in fact on BR in the 80's). I find it strange that XXR takes such pains to restore the GWR appearance of its stations, expends so much effort to turn out (mostly)GWR locomotives, in the correct livery etc, but is content for the rolling stock, the bit the customer actually interacts with most, to be dull, drab, TSO's
     
  12. ross

    ross Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    May 18, 2017
    Messages:
    1,002
    Likes Received:
    2,477
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Titfield
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    No I do not currently volunteer
    jnc, ragl, Bluenosejohn and 2 others like this.
  13. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    10,440
    Likes Received:
    17,941
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Cheltenham
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    I take your point on replacement being cheaper than repair when it comes to wooden bodies, quite prepared to believe that. But again, the relevant comparison purely from an economical point of view (and this whole sub-thread was started by positing that new-build coaches would be cheaper than restoring Mk1s) is between new build wooden coaches and restoring Mk1s. There's certainly no need to convince me that more vintage stock is more interesting than Mk1s, I agree, I much prefer it. But from a purely economic point of view, I still don't buy it.
     
    MellishR, ross, jnc and 1 other person like this.
  14. Dunfanaghy Road

    Dunfanaghy Road Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 9, 2019
    Messages:
    1,252
    Likes Received:
    1,566
    Gender:
    Male
    Occupation:
    Retired
    Location:
    Alton, Hants
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    I know Mk 1 bodies are (collectively) needing a lot of TLC, but surely the underframes and bogies will carry on for as long as anyone wants them to.
    Pat
     
    ross and flying scotsman123 like this.
  15. Monkey Magic

    Monkey Magic Part of the furniture

    Joined:
    Jan 6, 2018
    Messages:
    3,498
    Likes Received:
    6,845
    Location:
    Here, there, everywhere
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    No I do not currently volunteer
    I know that the Pickerings had ORR involvement and underwent a lot of testing after they had been delivered. So there is the infrastructure and some developed practice about putting this kind of new build into operation.

    I think what I actually said was there maybe a point in the future when it becomes more economically viable as i) the number of coaches and spares etc decreases and ii) the amount of work increases as the coaches get older and coaches that would have been scrapped are restored because of decreasing numbers of 'good quality' mk1s decreases.

    As I say, if people are willing to pay for a project then they can knock themselves out.
     
    ross likes this.
  16. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

    Joined:
    Mar 8, 2008
    Messages:
    26,103
    Likes Received:
    57,432
    Location:
    LBSC 215
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    I think that is true to an extent. However, for Mark 1 carriages, one particular issue with running gear of Commonwealth bogies (which are common in preservation) is that if they aren't properly overhauled, the axle boxes get hung up in the horn guides. At which point the primary suspension essentially doesn't exist - at low speed, the ride is still OK (because of the secondary suspension and the seats) but you suddenly have a big unsprung mass that affects the track.

    Which raises the question - how many lines are doing ground-up overhauls of their operational carriages, including running gear? In some ways, it is probably easier for larger lines, since - given resources - you can at least have some sort of budget and system; for example if you need thirty carriages, you do one per year. But if you are a small line and need 5 carriages, you do one every six years, but in practice that might turn into never doing them at all.

    The more I look at running railways - and carriages are a good example - the more I worry that whereas many people are interested in restoration, there is comparatively little interest in maintenance. That makes it harder to find people to carry out, especially volunteers, and harder to fund. But the old model whereby carriages came straight into traffic from the big railway and were run until no longer fit for purpose, at which point they were replaced, is no longer possible.

    Worth remembering that what was probably the single worst safety incident attributable to passenger carriages on a heritage railway was caused by maintenance failures of operational rolling stock.

    Tom
     
  17. Paulthehitch

    Paulthehitch Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 13, 2020
    Messages:
    1,090
    Likes Received:
    1,093
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Hayling Island
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    Presumably O.R.R. will examine records of A, B and C examinations periodically.
     
  18. JohnElliott

    JohnElliott New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2014
    Messages:
    82
    Likes Received:
    89
    Gender:
    Male
    On the other hand, if you've already got the rake of coaches but it could do with (say) a matching catering vehicle, I could see the attraction in wanting to recreate one of an extinct type.
     
  19. ross

    ross Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    May 18, 2017
    Messages:
    1,002
    Likes Received:
    2,477
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Titfield
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    No I do not currently volunteer
    This thread drift as made my ignorance clear to me. I know what frame members are called in building construction. I know a bit about carriage and wagon construction-the horse drawn variety, but although I can bring to mind many elevation and cross sections of British rolling stock, my vocabulary is lacking.
    Can anyone point me to a decent labelled diagram of carriage framing parts? online would be handy, but can anyone recommend a book on the subject?
     
  20. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

    Joined:
    Mar 8, 2017
    Messages:
    12,172
    Likes Received:
    11,493
    Gender:
    Male
    Occupation:
    Retired
    Location:
    Brighton&Hove
    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    No I do not currently volunteer
    I'd reckon we've at least two who could write a pretty damned comprehensive book on the subject! :D
     

Share This Page