A group of train enthusiasts in Invercargill are hoping to secure a section of heritage railway in the South, once their 3-year restoration project is completed.
The Southern Steam Train Charitable Trust salvaged an old New Zealand Railways locomotive – the F150 in 2019, and have secured over $300,000 to fund its restoration.
Chairman Lindsay Buckingham said the train was currently in pieces at various workshops around Invercargill, but thanks to grants, they will be able to employ about 20 businesses to help out.
“It’s a whole lot of work. We need to raise about $716,000 in total,” he said.
The F150 was one of only 88 F class steam locomotives in the country, and served on New Zealand Railways from October 1882, until its retirement in 1958 in Invercargill.
Built in Glasgow Scotland by Dubs and Co, the F150 was gifted to the Invercargill City Council in 1962, and installed in the Newfield playground along with a WW2 Valentine tank.
Both were enjoyed by successive generations of Invercargill children until it was removed in 1975.
Then it was extracted and taken to the Ocean Beach Railway in Dunedin where it was partly pulled apart, and the Southern Steam Trust found it completely in pieces in a railway yard in Ashburton in the 1980s.
“We found it in rusty pieces, and gathered them all up and transported it back to Invercargill to clean it up.”
The train had been partly assembled in recent years for open days to give the public an idea of what it would look like when it was going again.
So far, grants have come from the Lotteries, Environment and Heritage Fund, ILT, Community Trust South and the ICC Wellbeing fund.
E-Type Engineering will be carrying out the lions share of the restoration work over the next three years, “because it would takes us 30 to 40 years to do it ourselves,” Lindsay said.
The retired engineering project manager said he had been talking with several heritage trail trusts in New Zealand, to see how they do it successfully.
“It’s quite rigidly controlled in terms of safety, and there are operating licenses to obtain, etc,” he said.
The trust is hoping to set up its own heritage rail between Makarewa and Lorneville, once coal-fired boilers are decommissioned, and the Nightcaps line is freed up.
Lindsay said they were only looking to secure between 4km to 8km because railway required maintenance, such as bridges, and it was outside of their budget.
“We want to set up our own heritage rail away from the main network, because it’s a lot easier to run your own, and have your own trained and certified drivers and firemen.”
It would be expected that the locomotive would take public trips several times a year.
“Invercargill has never had heritage railway of any description,” he said.