The County of Inyo, working in a partnership with the C&C Rwy. organization, has received a substantial grant to create a new and larger display area for Locomotive #18, build a repair shop/museum building, and restore the locomotive to full operating condition. After a long period of preparation, the grant process, finally, is officially underway. However, a series of delays are doing so much damage to the construction budget that we can tell there is going to be a serious problem ($$$) by the time we get into the actual construction phase of the project. Some changes are going to have to be made in the current plans. Some difficult choices are going to be required. We would like to have your help in making those choices.

This article has been put together to give you an overview of what the plans for this project have been; what situations have occurred to interfere with fully achieving those plans; and to present two alternative ways of dealing with that interference. Then, we will ask you which option you recommend and how strongly you support that choice.

1. THE GOAL: To restore Locomotive #18 to full operating condition, and keep it in good operating condition, so that, for generations to come, local community members, school groups, visitors and tourists alike will be able to see and hear the marvelous sights and sounds of a steam locomotive in motion and to learn something about how they operate.

That goal also includes restoring some of the old wooden railroad cars that #18 used to pull up and down the Owens Valley. And, it also includes collecting, preserving, and displaying other artifacts associated with the railroad. The broader goal of the project is to combine these items with exhibits that explain to the traveling public the role that railroads played in promoting the social and economic development of Eastern California.

2. THE PLANS:
a. Put up a modest sized building to serve as a restoration and repair shop for the locomotive and railroad cars.
b. Put up another building nearby to serve as a small railroad museum and gift shop.
c. Acquire a long-term lease for new and larger display area alongside U.S. 395 in Independence where people can view #18 along with some of the railroad cars it used to pull.

3. PROGRESS: Three steel-framed corrugated metal shop buildings located at various abandoned mill sites have been donated to the project. Two have been dismantled and work will begin soon to take down the third building .
a. The two-story Darwin mill building is 40’ wide, 70’ long and 20’ high at the eaves. It is tall enough and just long enough to get the locomotive and tender inside the building.
b. The Pine Creek carpenter shop building is 60’ wide, 80’ long, and 16’ high at the eaves. It was built to withstand heavy (80 lb./sq.ft.) snow loads at an altitude of 8,000’ in avalanche territory. Consequently, its heavy steel columns and roof beams were spaced a mere 10’ apart instead of the more common 20’-25’ spacing found at lower altitudes. On the valley floor, the building can either carry a heavy roof that will last for at least 100 years or it’s length can be doubled to 160’ by spacing the columns and beams 20’apart to carry a light roof. At the 80’ length, the building is long enough to display a restored passenger car inside and still have enough room left for museum exhibits and the gift shop.
c. The split-level Firestone mill building is 50’ wide and 100’ long. The length of the building ran perpendicular to the slope of the hill it was built on, so the walls and ends are 14’ high one one side and only 9’ high on the uphill side. (The building doesn’t work out too well on level ground!) The crane operator didn’t have the roof beams properly placed in the slings and dropped all three of them on the concrete floor. We haven’t decided yet what to do with the pieces of that building. The framework of the office wing might be rebuilt to contain the public restrooms at the side of the museum building. The tapered columns and the roof beams, if matched by new columns of the same size on the other side, might be used to create an open-sided shed to shelter the locomotive and the people standing around it from the heat of the sun and from the rain. (Or, with enough extra money to buy some extra framework pieces and corrugated metal, it could be turned into two short buildings, one 9’ high and one 14’ high. We don’t have the money and that building is a low-priority item anyway.)
d. The County won’t be able to bill any of the time that County staff spend negotiating a lease with the City of Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power (DWP) to the project budget until the project officially goes into the Right-of-Way (ROW) phase, so, as far as we know, County staff haven’t done anything about talking to DWP about the lease issue yet.

4. BUDGET PROBLEMS: When the paperwork gets stuck moving from one level to the next within and/or between the various bureaucracies involved in the grant process, everything comes to a halt except for one thing—the steady rise in construction costs. Obviously, the longer the delay, the more the steady rise in construction costs eats away at the remains of the project budget. This project has been through two bureaucratic delays, described in detail in an earlier issue of this newsletter, and a third one is beginning.
a. We submitted our project proposal for an eligibility review in accordance with Caltrans written procedures, but because of a snafu involving the County and Caltrans, the eligibility determination did not come through until 13 months later.
b. After the project proposal was approved by the County transportation commission, the County staff left the proposal sitting on a shelf for two years before submitting it to Caltrans to forward to the State transportation commission. Part of the reason County staff held the project back for so long is because of a shortage of engineering staff to supervise the construction. Then, Caltrans staff held it up for another six months on a technicality. It has taken an additional five months to get the paperwork from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) that authorizes the expenditure of federal funds to get the project started. It will officially begin with a meeting in about another month.
c. This project is third in line after two other projects to receive the biggest part of its budget, which is during the construction phase. Both of those projects have run into major environmental clearance problems that have greatly increased their costs and delayed their progress. There is not enough money in the FY 2009-2010 budget that the County has received from Caltrans to finish those projects and pay for the construction phase of our project. As a result, the construction phase of our project is not set to begin until FY 2011-2012.

5. CONSEQUENCES OF THE DELAYS:
a. During the first 13 months delay, part of the money that had been available for this type of project was used up, and we had to settle for asking for the amount of money that was left. As a result of that reduced amount, we had to cut over $120,000 from the preliminary budget. We had planned to put up two buildings -- the shop building and a museum building. In order to make cuts that deep, we had to eliminate the museum building and instead, plan on adding some sort of small wing to the shop building. Thus, we went from a two-building plan to a one-and-a-half building plan. We also had to eliminate all of the power tools, strip the building, and eliminate most of the exhibit materials.
b. During those three years of inactivity (September, 2004 to September, 2007), the cost of building material inputs to non-residential construction have increased by 20.7% according to buildingteamforecast.com (using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). That means that we are going to have to cut our already bare-bones construction costs by at least another 20%.
c. Although we can begin the environmental work now, and then do the pre-engineering and ROW work, we will have to wait until July 1, 2011 to start construction. During that three and a half year delay, construction costs are going to continue to rise, requiring even deeper cuts in the budget. The Building Team Forecast went on to observe that:

“The supply chain is tightening up due to rapidly rising foreign demand for commodities used in construction and the still boom-level expansion of the non-residential construction market. Another period of high inflation for construction materials is soon ahead…The falling value of the U.S. dollar will contribute to rising prices on top of the price impact of the narrowing surplus of physical capacity over demand.” (Emphasis added)

The combined effect of these two long delays means that, probably, we are going to have to cut our construction costs by at least 40% to 45%. We will have the same amount of money that was in the revised budget, but it just won’t buy nearly as much in 2011 as it would have in 2004-2005. Consequently, in all probably, there is not going to be nearly enough money to even fulfill the one-and-a-half building plan.
We did put a factor of 10% into the budget in order to cover for contingencies such as inflation and last-minute changes. That 10% contingency factor was exceeded by cost increases a long ago. It would have been preferable to set aside a larger percentage for contingencies, but with all the budget cuts that had to be made, it just wasn’t feasible.
Therefore, we have to go back to the drawing board and come up with an alternate plan, and that is where you come in. We would like to have your input into the choices we will have to make.

6. THE CHOICES TO BE MADE (1 ½ vs. 2): Because we are going to have to do a fair amount of fundraising to make up the shortfall in the construction budget, we basically have two options. One option is to raise a modest amount of money and carry on with the current plan to put up a shop building with a small addition on one side. The other option is to work longer and harder to raise a larger amount of money and go back to the original plan to put up two separate buildings.

The advantages of each option are listed below. Read them and let us know what you think about the issues.

ADVANTAGES OF THE TWO-BUILDING OPTION:
a. HAZARDOUS MATERIALS AND FIRE SAFETY: Because of the fumes from paint thinners, cleaning solvents and other chemicals that will be used in the shop area, and because of the risk of a fire from the intense heat of welding torches and heat treatment processes being utilized, it is much better to keep these activities in a shop building that is entirely separate from the public meeting area represented by the museum/gift shop building.
b. NOISE ABATEMENT: The loud noises of machine tools cutting and milling steel stock, the hammering and pounding wooden beams into place, and the racket made by stacking and dropping heavy material in the shop area would all substantially interfere with the public’s ability to listen to and think about information being presented in the interpretive exhibit area on the other side of the wall, so the more we can separate the noise making activities from the quiet activities, the better it will be for all concerned.
c. THEFT REDUCTION: People do steal things from museums. Keeping them from doing that is an ongoing problem for all types of museums. Although some tours of the workshop area will be conducted for specialized groups of visitors, it is generally safer to keep the general public as far away from valuable tools and hard-to–find collectible locomotive parts as is feasible. What the general public doesn’t see or hear is less likely to become a theft target. Having two separate buildings just makes it easier to keep the public away from those potential targets.
d. ENGINEERING AND BUILDING CODE COMPLICATIONS: When we put the building(s) back up, they will have to be modified to meet current seismic and building code standards. A simple building vibrates differently in an earthquake than a building with various components stuck together, so the engineering design to meet those standards will be simpler and less expensive for two separate buildings than one building with a couple of major parts stuck together.
The commercial building and fire code requirements are different for a workshop area than they are for a museum, which is classified as a “public assembly” area. Again, it will be easier and less expensive to meet one set of codes in one building and another set of codes in the other building than to try to meet both sets of requirements in a building with separate areas stuck together, even when separated by a big firewall.
e. DIFFERENT SCHEDULES OF OCCUPANCY AND USE: The workshop area and the museum/gift shop area are going to be used at different times by different groups of people, so they are going to require different types of heating and cooling systems. The energy demands and utility bills are going to be different as well. This would be easiest to handle in two different buildings.
The museum/gift shop area is going to be used at regularly scheduled hours on particular days of the week, so the heating and cooling cycles can be put on a timer and the temperatures can be changed more gradually. The whole area will need to be heated or cooled because visitors will be moving around looking at things. As the collection of rare and fragile artifacts builds up, it will become increasingly important to have a relatively fail-safe heating and cooling system.
The workshop area is going to be used on an irregular schedule -- whenever some members are free to work on some item -- so a timer won’t help. Consequently, the work crews will want to be able to heat up or cool down their work areas fairly quickly. The work crews will often be working in just one or two areas of the workshop, so there is no need to heat or cool the whole building at once. Area heating will do. A breakdown of the heating and cooling system will interrupt the work of the work crew, but it isn’t likely to damage anything. It doesn’t need to be fail-safe.
f. CONSTRUCTION AND RESTORATION SEQUENCE: With the two building option, the workshop building can be put up, the locomotive can be restored, and then we can see how much is left over to build the museum/gift shop building and adjust the plans for it accordingly. Lessons learned from putting up the first building can be applied to erecting the second building. The risk of putting up a combined workshop/museum building is that by the time the building is finished, there may not be enough money left to restore the locomotive, which is the centerpiece of the whole project.
g. LONG TERM ECONOMY: The current budget limitations mean that the museum extension added on to the shop building will be relatively small. It certainly won’t be large enough to display a passenger car inside and the gift shop area will be cramped for space. The hope behind the one-and-a-half building is that someday enough money could be found to build a larger museum facility and move into it. The problem with that option is that money for a larger museum space might not ever be found, and even if it were, there would be a significant cost for moving everything out of the small addition into the new facility. In the long run, it would probably be less expensive to stretch the budget now and work hard to raise extra money in order to put up the two buildings we have than to compromise on space needs and try to move up to a larger museum/gift shop facility later on.
h. SPACE NEEDED TO GENERATE DONATIONS AND SALES: The only source of money to pay the bills to operate the facilities and do maintenance work on the locomotive year after year will be the donations that will be received in the museum area and the profits on the sales that will be generated in the gift shop. There needs to be adequate space for enough exhibits to provide museum visitors with a good enough experience that they will be willing to donate money to the museum. There needs to be enough space in the gift shop area to stock and display a fairly wide variety of items to buy. There is plenty of space for that in the Pine Creek building, but squeezing all of that activity into a small addition coming off one side of the shop building is just not likely to work, financially speaking.

ADVANTAGES OF THE ONE-AND-A-HALF BUILDING OPTION:
a. FINANCIAL IMPORTANCE OF THE MUSEUM/GIFT SHOP OPERATION: Because museum donations and gift shop sales are the only source of money to pay the ongoing operations and maintenance expenses of the new facilities and the locomotive, the museum/gift shop area is too important to be left as the last thing to be built. It is more important to have some space available than to be left at the end of the project without enough money to build any museum/gift shop space at all. There is no guarantee that we could raise enough extra money to pay the higher costs of putting up two buildings.
b. GOOD ENGINEERING DESIGN SOLVES PROBLEMS & SAVES MONEY: The seismic standards, building code issues, and lighting, heating, and cooling are all solvable problems that a good engineering firm can handle. With a solid firewall between the shop area and the museum/gift shop area, fires on one side won’t necessarily spread to the other. A good ventilation system can vent the fumes from the workshop area safely. Different types of heating and cooling equipment can be set up for different parts of the building and can be set to operate on different schedules in different areas. We don’t need to spend the extra amount of money for two separate buildings to deal with these issues, we just need a good engineering firm to create one building out of the parts of two buildings to serve multiple functions.
c. STAYS WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THE PROJECT AS APPROVED: The project proposal that was approved at the County and the State level was a one-and-a-half building proposal. Going back to the two-building proposal would not contradict the two functions (restoration shop and museum exhibit/gift shop) set out in the project proposal that was approved, but it might require having the modifications to the project approved again. Caltrans and the FHWA expect all grant projects to be completed as described, within budget, on time, and to operate without the need for additional federal funding.
d. REQUIRES LESS ADDITIONAL FUNDRAISING: We don’t actually know what the costs of construction will be three years from now, even though the chances of being able to stay within the budget set up three years ago are pretty poor. All the indicators point to having to raise some additional money to make up for the grant budget shortages, but we won’t have to raise as much additional money for a one-and-a-half building project as for a two-building project.
e. LESS MONEY FOR A BUILDING LEAVES MORE FOR OTHER THINGS: The less we spend on some sort of a building, the more will be available for the locomotive or for exhibit materials in the building. In all probability, there won’t even be enough money for the building, but limiting our building expenditures does offer more flexibility for using more of the money that we will probably have to raise for the many other items we need to have in order to create an attractive, educational facility.

CONCLUSION: WE WANT YOUR INPUT

We would like to know which option you believe is the best one to choose and how strongly you support that option. Whatever we do is going to require a lot of help from members and supporters of the C&C Rwy. organization to raise some amount of money to make up for the grant budget shortfall when we do get into the construction phase of the project. We need to know how much support there is out there for each option. e-mail us and, if you can, please support us. We look forward to hearing from you soon.