Work stopped after the Diversified Rail Services crew installed the drivers into the front engine last week. “We need to raise the remaining funds so the contractor can come back,” Executive Director John Garner said Friday.
A last remaining part for the rear engine, a driving box, must be purchased from a foundry at a cost of $39,000, then machined and installed. At that time, the boiler can be set on both engines and final piping and assembly can move forward. A crane company has offered to donate the lift. Once on its wheels, there’s eight to 12 weeks of work to get the engine ready for testing.
Hampering the effort has been the 2018 employee theft of running gear parts and the overall condition of the locomotive when it was acquired in 2014.
The parts theft complicated running gear repairs — the stolen brass was valued at the price of scrap, but the new parts must be carefully crafted and machined for fit and heavy use at great expense.
“The project, and the locomotive, has been dealt multiple bad hands since this initiative began,” says preservationist Jason Sobczynski, who worked on the locomotive. “But thanks to Diversified Rail Services and John Garner, the locomotive is very close to completion. In fact, had it not been for the bronze theft consuming available financial resources, it would have been running 4-5 months ago.”
After five years of work and more than $2.7 million, the project needs between $100,000 and $150,000 to finish the engine and another $80,000 to install a coal storage and ash removal system required by West Virginia environmental regulations, Garner says. That’s about 8 percent of the total cost of the project.
“The engine was in much worse shape than believed when the restoration began,” Garner says. “We’re hoping that our supporters, the people who want to see the engine back in steam, will push us over the top.”
For now, mostly completed, No. 1309 waits inside the former Western Maryland car shop at Ridgeley, W.Va., near Cumberland, waiting to see if people who care about steam step forward.
