Warning: this could be a long and rambling post!
When the CHS approached the City of Boulder about the use of #30/74, my first reaction was no way in hell. Thinking about it however, I realized it might provide a good oppurtunity to complete a restoration project that has been underway for eight years and might take another 20 at its current pace. I have been the project manager for the City on the restoration project and am president of the Boulder County Railway Historical Society, which was formed specfically to work with the City on the restoration of #30/74. I have put many hours into the project and more of my own money than I will admit to anyone.That said, it is not my locomotive and the decision is not mine, thogh I feel very stronly about the locomotive and what should be done with it.
The BCRHS board put the idea to all of the people who have volunteered on #30/74 over the years, and their responses can be seen on the link Chris Weaver posted above.I think the general feeling, myself included, was that it was worth hearing what the CHS had to say and taking the discussions a little further before making a final decision, so the BCRHS sent a letter to the City supporting the idea.
I think it is worth mentioning that it is still only a discussion at this point, the Boulder Parks & Recreation Department, which owns the locomotive, needs to get approval for teh idea from City Council before any serious discussions with the CHS can take place. Just because City Council approves the idea does not mean that #30/74 is automatically going to the CHS. There are still a lot of issues to be worked out.
The only way that the BCRHS would fully support the leasing of #30 to the CHS is if it can be shown that doing so will not hurt the locomotive. As it stands now, #30/74 sits outside in a prk, has rocks thrown at it daily and people breaking into the cab on a regular basis for shelter or god knows what. Short of an imbicle blowing up the boiler, its hard to imagine that running on the Loop for the next 5 ot 10 years could be anyworse for the locomotive than sitting neglected in Central Park for the same period of time.
As for the $250,000 figure for returning 30/74 to operating condition, this was a rough estimatebased upon the work already completed. Despite the locomotive's presently dilapidated look, alot of work has been accomplished and a lot of money spent on it; $60,000 for completly rebuilding the tender, $25,000 for asbestos abatement, $10,000 for a basic ultrasound of the boiler, repairs to the sand dome, a new smokestack mount, new cab windows, replica builders plates and new grease fittings for the side rods, $5,000 for a professional evaluation of teh locomotive by Steam Operations Corporation, $2,500 to restore the headlight (after some moron stole one of the side doors from it) Adding it all up, over $100,000 has already been spent on #30/74, not counting hundreds of hours of volunteer work. (This really shows how moronic the CHS's estimate of $200,000 to completley restore #9 is!!) Much of this money has come from State Historical Fund grants, proving that the CHS does manage to do good things.
At any rate, we now have a locomotive that needs a lot more work, but at least we have an idea of what it needs. Steam Operations Corporation's estimate to rebuild the locomotive (before much of the aforementioned work was done) was $400,000, take into account the $100,000 already spent and $250-300,000 appears to be a reasonable estimate to complete the job.
I still have very mixed feelings about the idea, on one hand its a great chance to get #30/74 running again (which I would love to see) on the other hand, while I would probably sell my own soul to the devil to restore #30/74, I am not sure its worth selling the locomotive's soul to the devil. The big unknown in the equation is who will the new operator of the Loop be and will they be competant? I would trust the current operators with #30/74 for 10 years and know that it would come back fine, but as of now we don't have the faintest clue who is even responding to the RFP. Not really a comforting thought.
Anyway, nothing is set in stone,and I welcome anyone's thoughts, post them here or email me.
Jason Midyette
