Thanks for the information, a shame it's taken so long (all credit for that to Dampflokwerk Meiningen)
While it is convenient to blame the Germans, the mistakes and delays were all locally generated.
Meiningen tendered to design and build a boiler. They were provided with drawings of the 38 class boiler.
Meiningen submitted their drawings to Australia for approval AND THEY WERE APPROVED IN AUSTRALIA.
The boiler was built to the approved design and on arrival was found not to fit.
So who checked the drawing in Australia and why did they not notice that the dimensions were wrong?
Then the boiler was sent back to Germany in the ill founded expectation that it would be corrected or a new boiler supplied.
However, the Germans pointed out that they had built exactly what was agreed, even if it wasn't what was wanted.
Almost all of the delay occurred after the first boiler was delivered.
Some of this was due to efforts to shift the blame and to conceal the fact that the money had been wasted.
Meiningen built the boiler for "Tornado" and it is expected that an exact copy will be built for "Prince of Wales".
But Tornado's boiler was built to drawings prepared by the society building it.
These were carefully checked against the original A1 boiler drawings.
Nobody checked the proposed Meiningen 38 class boiler drawings against the original 38 boiler drawings or if they did so failed to note the discrepancies. Had the differences been corrected, the Meiningen boiler would have been in use for most of the "delay" period.
Peter
Peter, a spot post. Like many others I was agast at the new boiler being not dimensionally correct when the news went out, even to the point where I had earlier stated that China could have built the boiler for a lot less, likewise its a lot closer to get to China for inspections then Germany. At the time, China still had two shops capable of building the new boilers, I doubt if that would be the case now.
As time has passed your post really illuminates the inefficiency of the people in charge of the project, hopefully they have learnt from this sad and sorry episode and maybe even look locally if new boilers are needed for any of the fleet, in saying that I am assuming the people who built the new boiler for 3265 would be able to still do similar works and even for larger boilers.
Certainly the company at Glbn should also be part of a local consortium that can provide efficient boilers and who knows what else they could do.