905 Restoration - from the project president
I appreciate you and the posting of our project on your forum. It was a matter of restore the locomotive or our city would get rid of it. The holes and leaking asbestos cost them too much money and the liability was too great.
I could spend a lot of time talking about the project. Please, visit our website, RockIsland905.com.
I have been working to make it Netscape, Firefox, Mozilla and Safari friendly. And it works well on Internet Explorer. There you can see everything we know: history, restoration, etc. The asbestos abatement began Feb. 14, 2008.
We are trying to do a $500,000 job for $230,000 and we are looking for the last $165,000.
For the gentleman who suggests making it into a running locomotive....As far as I know, there has only been one steamer go from display status to running status. If you have or can raise 2 to 3 million $$, you might get it certified. But you still don't have anywhere to run it. The UP won't let it on their track. If you're lucky, maybe there is an abandoned roadbed close by. I don't have any concept as to how many $$millions are needed. That's a bigger job than we are capable of funding.
Anyone who wants to actually do some physical work on a real steamer, you can join us by showing up. We have several people in their 70s working.
Any questions, please contact me here or through the website. We appreciate your support and well wishes.
Thanks, Mike Stuckert, President, Save the 905, Inc.,
President905@cableone.net