New Boiler - Why?

Prior to ordering the new boiler there was a discussion as to whether we should repair the old one instead. Indeed they can work miracles these days. We decided to go with a new one, here are some of the reasons.............

Loco Availability.

The Festiniog Railway has three engines rated for pulling 8 coaches. Smaller engines can do 6 which is fine off peak and the Fairlies can do 12 but cost more to run and maintain so they're good when its busy. As a result the 8 coach engines work most of the year and in any one year we need two of the three of them running.

Click on the picture on the left and you will see the loco plan based on the 10 year life between overhaul of the boiler. This dictates when the engine must come out of service. You will see that Mountaineer is next of the 8 car engines for overhaul in 2005.

As a result Blanche MUST be back in service for the 2005 season.

Mend or New?

This was the big decision, should we try to repair the existing boiler or buy a completely new one? The boxes below show some of the pros and conns.

Mend

May at the outset seem cheaper. Still an old boiler with possible unreliability. Repairs have a habit of increasing in scope, cost and timescale. Once you start you are committed to this path.

Eg Linda's last overhaul. Repair authorised at about £22k, scope increases and cost increases to nearer to £30k. Boiler is late back and still gives trouble in service
New Fixed price, £36.4K. New Boiler to current design standards. Contracted delivery date. Hopefully, then years trouble free service and another ten after a quick overhaul which is all a ten year old boiler should need - a re-tube basically.

We decided that on this occasion the right answer was a new one.

Here's what swung it

  • New inner firebox needed.

  • New front tubeplate needed

  • Bottom half of the outer wrapper needs patching

  • Bottom half of the backhead would need a patch

  • Throatplate would need attention

That only left the barrel and we only think that's OK! From this assessment we could see the following

  • Repair costs would be in the order if £30k

  • A true estimate of repair costs were not possible without stripping the boiler down

  • Repair cost only ever seem to go up

  • Impossible to assess the timescales

So, given we wanted the engine back in traffic by a certain date, reliable once it was back in traffic and we needed to know what it was going to cost a new boiler was the only answer.