Will: boiler swapping to a running gear frame other than the original, happened all the time on railroads. If shop forces had a running gear ready and a boiler ready and they were from the same class engines it would be done. Reason: simply to get the engine back on the road earning money. The engine number would follow the boiler in 99.9% of the time regardless of of the running gear it was put on. If on rare occasions it did not, a special record of that was kept for the governing agencies. In addition rods would also be swapped around. I remember when we were taking care of T&P 610 and finding many different engine numbers on her rods. In fact, she had only one rod labeled 610.
Every day a engine was in the shop it was not producing revenue for the railroad. In addition railroads kept a certain percentage of back up power in case of road failures or unexpected failure of operating engines. All of them wanted engines out of the shop as soon as possible.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/18/2016 12:54PM by Tomstp.