Re: Rebuild Costs *LINK*

Usually the major cost of a rebuild is labor. If a job is done properly it takes a lot of time and it requires people who are skilled. Fortunately we seem to be coming out of the glory years of tourist railroading where it was expected that people would work for nothing and slap a locomotive together so it goes chug chug for a few trips.
The people who work on steam locomotives for a living, and who know what they are doing, are very few in number compared to other professions such as lawyers and accountants who regularly charge over $100 per hour minimum. It is my opinion that if we do not pay these people in accordance with their skills, there will be no one left to do this sort of thing. Passion and dedication alone do not put food on the table or put the kids through school.
If you look at a typical overhaul on a mid-sized locomotive, it may take 10,000 man hours. By the same token you may be able to get that same locomotive to move under its own power for 1000 hours. If you think of all the locomotives that have been brought back to service over the years and are no longer running, you can usually figure they got the 1000 hour job.
The size of the locomotive has a significant bearing on cost as well. If you replace a crownsheet on a small locomotive you might have 150 crown bolts whereas a larger locomotive may have 450 or more. If you can get the crown bolts for $25 each, that is $3750 in material costs for the small engine and $11250 for the larger. If you figure one man hour to install the bolt (including sheet work, prep, driving, etc), at $59 per hour, you now have $27,700 to install the bolts in the larger engine (including materials). This doesn't consider installing the new sheet.
Materials are not getting any cheaper, particularly steel. Pattern makers and foundries are fewer and more costly. Basically we are trying to maintain an "industrial age" machine in the "information age".
Hope this answers your question.