The most intact V-Class locomotives in the world have been unearthed near the Southland town of Lumsden, with hopes they can be fully excavated by January 2020 and eventually restored.
New Zealand Rail's V-Class locomotives in 1885. Photo: Supplied / E.J. McClaire Collection
Lumsden Heritage Trust chair John Titter tells Afternoons' Jesse Mulligan the trains were designed for New Zealand railways in 1885.
"The V-class locomotive was a locomotive built in Manchester to meet the increasing needs of passenger service and goods - in the early 1800s New Zealand Rail put out a design based off the previous smaller K-Class which in fact was the original Kingston Flyers."
The V-class was made specifically for New Zealand's railways.
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"It took seven years from design to delivery and then they were found to be too heavy for the line.
"New Zealand rail wouldn’t accept delivery until they were lightened to meet the specifications - they were five-and-a-half tonnes overweight and that was excluding the tenders," Titter says.
He says there's a reason the engines were dumped at the junction of the Mararoa and Waiau Rivers in 1927.
"New Zealand rail had a bit of a problem with its surplus-to-requirement locomotives and other items that they had lying around the yard that were past their use-by date.
"Because of the low price of scrap metal post-war - the First World War - they came up with this idea of putting them in as flood protection around the rivers of New Zealand."
He says there are about eight other known dumping sites around New Zealand.
"There were three locomotives dumped into the Mararoa junction and about eight or ten wagon loads of other equipment - we pulled out a vertical crane boiler yesterday that someone was quite keen on and one other locomotive was recovered out of there in 1985 which was what they call K-92 - and that’s been fully restored."
He says the dig yesterday was aiming to figure out how much a complete excavation would cost.
"Yesterday went way beyond our expectations in where we thought we’d be by the end of the day, to be fair," he says.
“We exposed them a bit more so we could get an idea - the biggest thing about lifting those out of there or winching them out is suction.
"They as a machine themselves weigh about 35 tonnes, the boilers haven’t got the stacks on them so they're full of silt, so that’s going to add weight."
He says the next step is to get funding to dig and lift them out, then transport them to the tracks at the railway station managed by the Trust.
"We have the intention of putting them on track ... to preserve them for the fact that someone may one day wish to restore them.
"Our organisation is probably not at a capacity to restore them."
Titter seems pleased at the interest the dig has generated.
"We’re interested in preserving, you know, the history of New Zealand into the future ... but the thing I love most about the Heritage Trust ... is the interest that it generates in people from all walks of life and ages."
He says there was an article titled The Long Day Closes published in the 1 January 1929 edition of the New Zealand Railways magazine which explained the significance of the dumping and how the railway workers saw the loss of the locomotives' loss as "significant and pathetic".
"How they loaded up the trucks and old boilers, and they’ve got here: ‘other weird material’.
"Then they’ve got ‘lastly, three old locomotives stripped of their parts, dead giants of the past going to their resting place that formed the train."
To donate or be involved with the project, head to the Trust's Facebook page and message the page admins.