7027 Thornbury Castle

Half a dozen folk desperate to red underline its number & then demand the next new thing.

 

Just realised my choice of words was not the best. When I used the word elements I was referring to those of the weather (wind, rain, humidity, etc) and not superheater element’s, which will definitely need replacing.

 

Probably more than a dozen, but you’re spot on. There is a sort of arms race to do the next “new” thing.

We have too much activity within heritage railways. Too many projects, too much infrastructure, too many vehicles in store. I’m not advocating a clearing out or a closing down. I do think that various groups and societies and railways need to look hard at what is essential and what is historic and ensure that is safeguarded, because resources are getting thinner, and my gut feel is that they will stop contracting at some point, but are unlikely to return to a situation of significant growth.

Personally I think 4709 is a dangerous and expensive distraction for the GWS that they cannot afford and they should focused on the rest of their excellent collection and environment. If a group can build the engine without detracting from the GWS then that would be fine. I don’t think that’s the case with the setup at present.

 

Absolutely spot on. The heritage sector (not just railways) is facing challengint times and really needs to think hard about what to spend resources on. Money and manpower are both tight and probably still going into reverse at the moment. As Simon says if 4709 could be completed without significant effect on the preservation and restoration of the existing historic and important collection, then fine, but iti is not at all obvious that that is the case

 

Generally agree with that, but in taking on the unrestored Castle boiler that project not only saves about £500,000 on building a one off new item it also saves an enormous amount of specialist work and time in getting it approved as no grandfather rights would be available. Time and money are increasingly scarce so a canny move in my opinion. It's not my favourite project but it's growing on me.

 

I really would love to see the funding plan and where some of you are getting the “save 500K” from, because from where I’m sitting it looks absolutely pie in the sky.

Regardless of whether you are building new or fixing an existing boiler, certification and specialist skills are required, will cost money, and everything is dependent on the condition of the individual boiler and the required design for the boiler.

 

They could have used 2861's boiler as originally planned, which would have saved the cost of buying and moving 7027. It would have been authentic and sufficient for heritage railway use, which, let's face it, is where 4709 will end up working if it is ever finished.

 

I’ve been wondering for a few days about certain new build projects, and why they get into trouble and - perhaps more importantly - why they carry on somewhat unaffected even when by external measures they look to be in deep trouble.

The first thing to say is that in almost any organisation, projects go wrong. They fail to deliver to quality, budget or timescale, and part of the role of being a project manager is finding solutions when a project is off track on one or more of those measures. So we shouldn’t be surprised by a project on a heritage railway going wrong.

Of the three points, “quality” is the hardest to compromise on for a new build. In this context, quality doesn’t mean “did the painter allow black paint from the running plate to drip down across the red buffer beam?” Rather, “quality” refers to the extent that the project delivered what was originally intended. In my own area of IT, a lot of modern project methodologies look at ways to control the scope so as to deliver value as quickly as possible and then incrementally improve: "minimum viable product" is a phrase often heard. You do the least (= cheapest and quickest) to get something workable and delivering value, then go through incremental improvements where doing so increases value. But there is little in the way of MVP if your objective is to build a locomotive, so in practical terms, there is little possibility for controlling costs by controlling scope - if your objective is to deliver a locomotive, then delivering a chassis without a boiler hasn't delivered half of the value, it has delivered none of it. That said, there are some areas where there are options on scope, and I think in several examples - 47xx amongst them - a lack of clarity of what is being delivered has resulted in expensive rework. Given a change in boiler design has all sorts of expensive effects elsewhere on the loco, such as the design of the cylinders and saddle, you shouldn't be making changes in design of that magnitude years into the project. Vacillation between mainline or not mainline also seems to have driven needless cost of rework into several new builds, notably the Patriot. Again, you shouldn't be discovering that the wheels are unsuitable for mainline running a decade into a project.

If you can't compromise much on quality, then you have cost and timescale. And it is here that new builds get weird in project terms. Firstly money: most such projects don't have accurate projected budgets, but instead have a fundraising machine that can supply money at a broadly constant rate, and the project paces itself to match the cash flow. If you are raising £100k per year and find you've screwed up and need £200k to redo some work - well, you just stretch the project out by another two years! There is sometimes a tendency to admire projects that have effective fundraising machines, but that is a delusion if it isn't matched by robust cost controls that monitor the project against budget at a strategic level as well as day-to-day. If you don't have a budget, then by definition your project can never be over budget ...

Which comes to timescale: most projects don't seem to have very realistic timescales either ("it'll be ready when it is ready") and in as much as there is a general view of how long it will take, they are projects that are beyond anything you'd see in a commercial setting: no organisation could sustain a project lasting 15 - 20 years, least of all with the same core staff progressing it all that time. (I make a distinction here between projects and programmes). I've written before about the distinction in railway circles between "operators" and "restorers", and the risk that for the "restorers", carrying out activity on the project to build something can become an end in itself, rather than a means to an end of a finished vehicle. The longer a project lasts, the less it seems there is an incentive to finish - because, after all, what is another year when you have waited 20 years already?

In a commercial environment, projects go wrong, but there are controls to manage the situation when they do. You monitor progress against timescale and budget, and if it looks like you are not meeting one or both, then you have options: they can range from decreasing scope (hard in our context), increasing budget or time or, in some cases, cancelling the project: sometime you have to accept that a project isn't worth delivering at any price. But it seems in many new build projects, the controls aren't there, and any hope of imposing any kind of control is hamstrung by projects not having well defined budgets, timescales or, in some cases, objectives. The result is that such projects continue all the time the fundraising machine continues to feed them: in fact, they cease to be projects, but become a kind of day-to-day operations.

The question then is whether that is a problem. If those engaged are enjoying themselves, does it matter if a ten year £1.5m project is still not ready after twenty years and £3m spent? I’d suggest it does matter in two areas: firstly, the donors who are feeding the machine should have a reasonable expectation that their money is being wisely spent, which clearly isn’t happening in some cases. And secondly, where a loco is based at a particular centre, it is inevitably creating an opportunity cost, even if just in things like management overhead, storage, utility charges and so on. Running what should be projects as a form of BAU activity is not, I’d suggest, a good way to deliver value.

Tom

 

Thanks for a very lucid analysis.

 

Thanks Tom.
I was confused by the BAU reference (Business As Usual I found) but your analysis is very accurate. I suspect many of the donors to these projects (possibly many on here!) regard their donations almost as triumphs of hope against expectation....but then the history of Railway preservation is made up of such belief.....and see what has been achieved.

 

That was an excellent summary which could do with appearing in the railway press!

 

That is true, but the result would have been a reproduction of a locomotive which in operation did not meet the GWR's requirements and which (according to some accounts) they had only ever intended as a stop-gap until the larger boiler was available. So it would have been in one way more authentic than what is now planned for 4709, but also less representative as a working illustration of what the GWR actually wanted and used. It could be a case of "You pays your money and you takes your pick", though in this case some obscurity remains about who is taking the decision, the amount of money and where it is coming from.

 

I think that’s a bit of a fallacy. What has been achieved has mostly been achieved by projects which do not conform to the dysfunctional situation Tom was very accurately describing. Yes there have been some very impressive projects that took many years. I think if we are honest though these are a small fraction of the total number of projects that make up the preservation scene. Fortunately, because otherwise no railway would have enough carriages for its trains.

 

And if you can dress up a Castle boiler to look like a pukka 4700 one, could the same not have been done with the one off 2861?

 

I seem to recall that they were planning exactly that at one stage, with some bodging of the smokebox saddle to fit, but then changed their minds. A Castle boiler is much closer to the correct No. 7 and so needs much less dressing up, but whether that justifies the expense of buying Thornbury's and the consequent ill will seems very dubious.

 

What state is the boiler off of 2861? will it cost less to overhaul than the cost of buying 7027? and at least its authentic, for the prototype, and for preserved railway use, would have been ok, My point has always been that, there is another boiler, that could have been used, where as with 7027, there is no other boiler that should anyone decide to restore it in the future, its no longer a viable project, it can only be a source of spare parts, I have said previously, that IMHO, the 47 could be built with the 28 boiler, as 4700, and ran as such for the first ticket, in the meanwhile that gives ten years to fund raise for a new build boiler, of the correct type, and in the mean while, the GWS, can overhaul 7027, to take the place of 4073 as the next roving ambassador taking the place of 4700, and 4073.

 

Has anything from the 28xx actually been used now, the cylinders were originally, then the plan changed, the boiler was going to be, then the plan changed, (there seems to be a theme here )so it's just another locomotive that has been dismantled in the wake of this palaver at the whim of a group who don't seem to really know what they want to achieve.

Add into the equation that the 47xx group now seems to be looking very like the 6201 group in having very limited public engagement not sure where its going to go, I am probably their key market to attract money and would have done so at the start, but frankly that ship sailed ages back and 2874 has been the (and the GWS's) benefactor in my case.

 

Deleted

 

As outsiders we don't know any of the costs, but just restoring 2861's would surely be cheaper than buying and restoring the Castle boiler.

 

Depends on relative condition of each to the other. I think pretty much any boiler of that size that hasn’t been steamed for 60 years and lacks most fittings will be a £500k + project depending on the amount of contract and paid staff work used. Given such a boiler might be £1m all new, is this the source of the £500k “saving”. Any way I look at this though it makes no sense. It is a lot of money for a replica that isn’t a replica that will probably do one 10year period on heritage lines where it will be larger than any of them needs on a regular basis, do very little to increase our understanding of the GWR or any other railway or the development of the steam engine generally (being itself a bit of a dead end).