Having met and discussed the Beach Head project with one of its leaders, his words came to be summarized as such; We weld fabricated the cylinders because at the time it was thought casting the cylinders would be cost prohibitive and too complex. Now that there are many new build projects, heritage locomotives repairs with new cylinders, and the pattern making technology has advanced to one off 3D foam prints, I wish we had just waited a bit longer and gone with the casting process. Its cheaper that way now and avoids all the thought about welded assembly and tricky issues with warping -Fred Bailey. I cannot remember every word he said to place it as a quote, but this is as close as I can remember the two year old discussion.

A good example of that last bit he said can be seen in the build log for Lyn (topic locomotive) around the time they got to machining the welded assemblies. If I recall correctly, one side was incredibly close to too small due to warping and miscalculations in material placement/length.

Take what 2 cents you find in his words, each project can benefit or find drawbacks in either method of production.