A report into a troubled North-East steam loco project has cost £18,000 - three times as much as the cost of putting the problems right, it has been revealed today.

Trustees building the first steam locomotive for more than 40 years published the report into the £1.7m project to silence their critics. But the report has cost more to compile than the deficiencies it highlighted and delayed completion of the report by six months.

The A1 Pacific Tornado, which is being built at Darlington's Hopetown engineering works, was rocked earlier this year after a group of disaffected enthusiasts claimed engineering errors had been made, which would cost up to £50,000 to repair.

In a letter to the trust's 1,500 covenantors, Keith Bottomley claimed that the Tornado would be unsafe unless remedial work was carried out, which led to a meeting being called and the trust agreeing to commission an independent inspection.

This has now been carried out by Engineering Link, an engineering consultancy, and the trust is confident it will bring an end to the dispute.

Mark Allatt, Chairman of the trust explained that there are non-conformances, where certain components are not exactly as they are in the drawing, but it is nothing serious.

"There are non-conformances on 176 out of 3,220 parts of the locomotive that need putting right, which we will do," he said.

One of the problems was with the hornguides, but Mr Allatt explained the trust knew about this before the report was commissioned, and it has been corrected and paid for by the original contractor.

Another problem was with spot facing, a machining process on castings to ensure a flat seat for bolt heads and nuts, which has also been rectified, costing a total of £6,400, paid for with a donation the trust received.

Mr Allatt said: "We hope this will be the end of it. The inspection report has cost over £18,000, that's three times as much as the cost of putting things right.

"This has damaged us, new supporters may have thought twice about joining us and marketing initiatives have had to be put on hold, resulting in the loss of about £31,500 in potential income. Plus it has added at least six months onto the project."

Mr Allatt added that he was angry anyone professing to have the interests of the project at heart would do so much to damage it.

In a bid to avoid any problems in the future the trust is to recruit someone to check the quality of work on the Tornado.

It is also improving communication with its covenantors, by re-vamping its quarterly magazine and circulating the accounts.