K-4 locomotive returning to Altoona in pieces

[NS Newsfeed]

Railroaders Memorial Museum has suspended restoration of its historic K-4 steam locomotive in Scranton after more than 10 years. It was a job that was supposed to take three years.

Despite speculation from rail fans, the project isn?t dead, museum Chief Executive Officer Scott Cessna said.

The project?s future is uncertain because Cessna cannot say where, when, by whom or how the job will get done.

This spring, shortly after he started talking about a media event to mark installation of the drive wheels, signaling the project was nearly complete, Cessna received two pieces of damaging news.

First, the state budget office said it would not reimburse the museum for work done on the K-4 as part of a 2006 Redevelopment Assistance Capital grant for $1.6 million until the locomotive is finished, he said.

Then a contractor hired to help finish the boiler discovered the roof sheet over the firebox section was too thin and not fastened well enough to meet modern safety standards.

Cessna suspended work on the locomotive and ordered that when it resumes, it will be in Altoona, after 10 years at the Steamtown National Historic Site.

Parts of the K-4 will be shipped to Altoona. The five-man museum crew that worked on the project at Steamtown was laid off.

Cessna hopes to have future work done in the museum yard, where he proposes to build a quarter-roundhouse, which will contain a locomotive workshop.

But the construction contract for the quarter-roundhouse remains unawarded because Gov. Ed Rendell hasn?t come up with a $2 million grant that state Rep. Rick Geist, R-Altoona, claims he promised. Rendell denies making the promise.

The museum may settle for a smaller project, which still will take until spring to complete, leaving the K-4 project without a real home.

Cessna will place the K-4 parts into the museum basement, a storage room in nearby Memorial Hall, a local shop whose owner has offered space, rental storage space and the shops of various contractors.

While Cessna said he would welcome crew leader Mike Tillger back for the project, he expects ?new faces? to be working on the smaller, manageable components at the various locations and eventually the whole locomotive at the quarter-roundhouse.

Out of funding

The museum used a $1.6 million federal transportation enhancement grant last fall and is out of funds for the K-4 unless it can get reimbursement for $505,000 already spent from a 2006 state Redevelopment Assistance Capital Project grant or an additional $250,000 that remains unspent from that grant.

The state isn?t reimbursing the museum because it reclassified the locomotive project as an ?exhibit? instead of ?construction,? Cessna said.

?There are very strict rules governing ?true construction,? such as bid requirements, prevailing wage and all sorts of other things that the loco project didn?t really lend itself to,? Cessna wrote last week in an e-mail.

Rendell?s office is demanding that the locomotive at least be on-site, if not complete, for reimbursement, governor spokesman Chuck Ardo said.

The state is doing the museum a favor by allowing K-4 reimbursement at all because the 2001-02 Capital Budget line item that authorized the grant doesn?t mention the locomotive, Ardo said.

It states: ?For acquisition of a building and related construction, rehabilitation and repairs.?

The state is allowing the work to take place in Altoona but not Scranton because it?s less likely to get out of control here, Ardo said.

The ruling shouldn?t have been a surprise to the museum because ?we have made [the ground rules] clear throughout this process,? Ardo said.

Cessna said the grant contract is replete with references to the K-4 restoration as phase 1 of a three-phase program that also includes a turntable, display track and the quarter-roundhouse.

Cessna will press for state reimbursement to begin before completion of the locomotive, arguing that while under construction in Altoona, the K-4 will be an ?exhibit? with visitors able to observe the work.

He will try to extend the museum?s maxed-out K-4 line of credit based on the promise of eventual reimbursement through the grant.

Better management

For the first time since taking over the project in 2002, Cessna doesn?t feel the urge to move quickly.

?We need to be deliberate,? he said. ?I don?t want to do anything to continue to open the museum to questions of mismanagement and impropriety.?

He wants to bring the locomotive back to Altoona now for better management, as the discovery of the roof-sheet problem makes the second time a newcomer has found slipshod work.

The museum will commission a thorough examination of the boiler and other critical components and get an estimate of the man-hours and money required to get it right before resuming work, Cessna said.

The critical work will go only to those who are certified experts, he said.

To get the roof sheet right, a crew will need to cut out a section of ?-inch steel plate, said Bob Yuill of Historic Machinery Services in Springville, Ala., the consultant who discovered the problem.

The crew then will need to shape and form a thicker replacement section, weld it in place and add staybolts, either bigger or more numerous than those already in place.

The museum needs to do the work according to standards of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Yuill said.

?That?s what I hang my hat on,? he said. ?If not that, then what? Grandma?s recipe??

He couldn?t say how much the roof sheet would cost to fix, but it wouldn?t be cheap or quick.

He also warned that an assessment of critical components might uncover other problems.

The engineer on the project should have discovered the roof sheet deficiency, he said.

The progress made so far fooled him initially.

When he first saw the locomotive, he said, ?We?ll have water in this thing by the end of summer.?

But when he examined the boiler, it didn?t look good and ?went downhill from there,? he said.

Because modern safety standards are higher than when the locomotive was in regular service, the museum must build the boiler better than the original, Cessna said.

The museum could make a case to leave the roof sheet at the original thickness, but Cessna is reluctant to try for fear of compromising safety.

The locomotive?s smaller components are as secure as the former crew could make them by palletizing and wrapping, Cessna said.

Some prized pieces that would be tempting as souvenirs have been in Altoona from the start, he said.

A $2.85 million project

The $2.85 million the museum has spent so far on the project isn?t unreasonable, said Steamtown Superintendent Kip Hagen, whose organization hasn?t been involved in the project for five years, except to provide shop space.

It initially provided supervision and man-hours, based on a now-defunct agreement under which the University of Scranton also provided management oversight.

The Canadian Pacific Railroad spent more than $3 million several years ago to refurbish a former Steamtown locomotive that was in better shape than the K-4, Hagen said.

It?s not unusual for unexpected problems to show up during restorations, or for project managers to feel embarrassment at having to ask for more funding, he said.

The initial K-4 agreement called for a $500,000 project.

Restoration crews are small in contrast to the swarms of workers during the days of steam, and progress often is painfully slow, as modern standards have risen, Hagen said.

Contributing to the impression that the K-4 has become an irredeemable boondoggle are repeated assurances that the locomotive?s triumphant return is imminent.

In a now-ironic newsletter dated April 1 on the museum Web site, Cessna admits that ?too many times, the promised return of 1361 has come and gone.? But he asks supporters ?to stay on course with the project and know that your 2006 investment in the restoration of 1361 will reap huge rewards in the 2007 season.?

Cessna said he is outraged by the latest developments.