2020 was a very strange year, affecting nearly all aspects of the Engine Shed life. Fortunately, we were able to finalize the most crucial repairs of the shed’s buildings. On Monday, 21^st December 2020, Voivodeship Office of Historical Monuments Protection in Łódź and the board of PARE approved the first stage of repairs of the roof of the Shed’s former office building.

Despite our initial budget and plans to start with the most damaged half of the roof, the final refurbishment covered around two-thirds of its surface. The scope of work was also much broader than in case of the nearby former storage building. The whole office building is covered in tile roof mode of a poor quality concrete tiles. All of them had to be thrown away and replaced with a proper ceramic tiles. During the repairs, lasting over couple of weeks, close to 15 thousand tiles has been laid on the roof. All tiles have been rescued from the demolished warehouse build during II World War at the Łódź Olechów station.

The continuation of the works till the mid-December was possibly thanks to an exceptionally warm weather and surplus financial assets collected over the year. We hope that the scope of work done will stop the further deterioration of the building. As expected the cost of the repairs reached quite high amount – 120 709,52 PLN. The council of Łódź Voivodeship supported us with the amount of 52 500 PLN, the rest of the cost was covered from our own assets, including the money form 1% of the income tax (ca. 37 thousand PLN).

At this point we decided to sum-up costs of all building repairs since the Association took over the shed and were quite astonished that we are close to reaching a total amount of 1.4 million PLN.