NHN503 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 12:06 pm100% this.This is exactly what I mean. It blows my mind to see railroaders with years of experience canned or forced out to be replaced by employees with zero or non relevant experience. You spend thousands on surfacing and then go out and do that. But that’s the thing, Swirk doesn’t seem concerned about spending/financing.
I wouldn't even remotely consider going back as long as he's there. I mean even simple things are done backwards. They ran a Mk4, and are now out there stuffing ties...seriously come on now. Why spend thousands of dollars, to have a contractor tamp and surface to then have a crew of people with little to no experience go out and stuff ties and disrupt that surface? Oh and purchase relatively new equipment for that inexperienced crew to use.
TST is ties stone tamp, not tamp stone ties.
To give an example, on average for a standard gauge steam locomotive, between crews, firing up, oil, water etc., you can expect to have an operating cost of right around $2,000 per day to run steam. In the past few weeks, we’ve seen 7470 placed mainly on display for “training” and for Swirk whistle blowing. If you’re not running revenue service with that locomotive then all you’re doing is eating the daily costs to run it.
And I’m curious as to what training is actually happening. Seems more to me that Swirk is just using it as an opportunity to blow the whistle and for Solomon to plant it in front of the radio stations that were at the depot yesterday. Other than that, she’s sitting in the yard blowing the safety every dozen or so minutes and then being put away. Then she gets fired up the next weekend and the process goes on. Again, anyone that knows steam boilers, doesn’t have to be a steam locomotive either but any steam boiler, knows that boilers expand a fair amount when fired and filled with steam pressure and contract when cooled down. There’s a lot of movement happening to that 101 year old boiler and the rivets holding it together. Back in 1921 boilers weren’t welded. Rivets hold the components of a boiler together at butt seams.
The rapid expanding and contracting of the boiler is what concerns me. When the guys from Maine are there I’m confident the boiler is in good care. But when they aren’t, I guarantee you she’ll be fired too quickly if she’s not already. I don’t know if the guys from Maine are the ones firing her on startup or not. The guys at the Colorado Railroad museum will start firing an engine on Thursday if it’s expected to be running on Saturday.
And to the comments on financing, if you look up Profile Mountain Holdings and Profile Mountain LLC on public records, you can see the whole financing picture. Like I said an equity loan was pulled against the property in mid-May for the amount of $200,000. I assume the new dome car but who knows with the way things are being purchased there now.
