Reiesel Overhaul

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Ted Miles
I may be treading on thin ice as I am not a Diesel person; but I think that you have to fabricate everything for a major steam locomotive.
But with a Diesel, you go to your McMaster Carr catalog and send for one of those and three of the other etc.
There are no shortage of shops that are set up to do any level of work that a person or company wants to have done to a given Unit.
Less time is less money. Therefore the Diesel should be cheaper than a steam locomotive

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Ted,
It may seem that way, and my experience is with commuter; but it now takes 9 months to get an H tightlock coupler; it takes two-three months to get FRA Type II glass, the standard response for anything from Westinghouse Passenger Transit is "28 weeks" if it is not an ABDX-L valve, and it recently took me three months to get a diaphragm tube for a passenger coach from the heir to the Power Parts company. I cannot even get new passenger wheel plates from Standard Steel unless I order 40 of them and am willing to wait 9 months.
My point was "to the same level of utility". That would assume a program of overhaulling more than a one off, and using program techniques, as opposed to "let's fix everything we find one at a time, and then let's fix what we find next." If it presently costs $600,000 to completely overhaul a Heritage steam heated coach to commuter standards, and the project takes 18 months from bid to completion; and a Diesel overhaul takes two years and $1 mil, then I think it has come to the point that a complete steam restoration is in the same order of magnitude as a Diesel overhaul.
Steve Zuiderveen