(The Associated Press circulated the following article on April 10.)
ALTOONA, Pa. — A western Pennsylvania railroad museum’s centerpiece, the last working K-4 steam engine in the world, may be falling further behind schedule.
Efforts to restore the vintage K-4 locomotive, designed and built in Altoona 87 years ago, have already taken five years longer than expected.
The locomotive, which broke down during tourist trips in the late 1980s, was moved from the Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum, about 80 miles east of Pittsburgh, to the Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton in 1997 for three years of expected repairs.
Officials with the museum say the locomotive could be repaired and return to railroad tracks by fall, but some steam engine enthusiasts and experts are skeptical.
Among the skeptics are Ross Rowland, who has been called “America’s Greatest Railfan,” and Bill Benson, who has restored as many as six locomotives, including a steam engine that pulled American Freedom Train for the U.S. bicentennial.
Rowland, of Ringoes, N.J., who is credited with starting the tourist railroad industry in the 1960s, claims the restoration of the K-4 shouldn’t have taken longer than two years. Rowland claims the museum didn’t hire one of a handful of people in the country experienced enough to restore a steam engine.
“The long sad story of the K-4,” Rowland said. “A story of well-meaning people who didn’t know what they were doing.”
Crews worked on the K-4 for six years with little money and few parts before museum officials discovered reportedly poor workmanship. Museum officials in 2003 found several problems, including corroded bolts in the firebox, where coal is burned; they also said a portion of the steel plate making up the firebox was too thin.
The museum switched crews in 2002. Officials let go a team working under an agreement among the museum, Steamtown and the University of Scranton, and hired Bill Frederickson, who had been working to restore “The Constitution,” a former Boston & Maine Railroad locomotive, until the project started running out of money.
Benson, from Akron, Ohio, claims crews working on the K-4 had no reason to tear it apart. It was repaired in 1986 and, when it broke down after a year, it was because of main-bearing and drive-axle failure, he said. That meant crews only needed to fix those parts and improve the locomotive’s lubrication, he added.
But museum Executive Director Scott Cessna said Rowland may be critical because he wasn’t hired by the museum to evaluate the engine and said the two have “a contentious relationship.”
Meanwhile, Cessna and other people who have worked on steam engines said the K-4 should be repaired from the wheels up.
“Yeah, it takes longer and costs more. But what would it cost to take it apart four or five (more) times?” said Steve Lee, manager of the Union Pacific Railroads steam program in Cheyenne, Wyo.
Little work appears to have been done on the locomotive since August. The big barrel of the boiler still sits on jacks over a work pit and pieces are spread around the shop.
But museum officials say work should move quickly after the museum gets approval from the Federal Railroad Administration to repair the steam dome, a reservoir for steam on top of the locomotive.