West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Even so, £3m is a ridiculous amount to target especially when the article quotes the chairman as saying that they haven’t done a full assessment yet.

6880 cost £1.3m to build and is of similar proportions, so I’m not sure why a complete loco should cost over double that amount, unless they’re planning to replace the boiler, cylinders, wheels etc!

 

When preparing a cost estimate it is always wise to allow a healthy contingency sum to deal with emerging work. 7821 has been in store/on display for many years. If it had been cost-effective to put it back into working order then it would still be in use. It's current owners will have access ( or should have access) to a library of past records and assessments for the loco so it should be possible to make an informed judgement as to the scope of work. It is quite possible that repair work will involve the replacement of all or most components, in effect a new build. Pricing this sort of job is almost impossible.

 

That's fair, but if releasing a figure into the public domain, I'd expect quite a bit of that assessment to have been done beforehand.

If the level of component replacement suggested is required, then I'd have anticipated something in the press release to have spoken to that - and it's just not there. At that point, the psychological effect on me is to induce mistrust.

 

So why buy it in that condition 3 years out of ticket ?

 

Since no one touched this one. Let me ask: Huh?