You mean these parts?
They are at the Fielding & Districts Steam Rail society's depot. There is a boiler, One whole and multiple parts of frames, plenty of wheels, cylinders and a collection of other bits.
I had the opportunity to photograph them together with plenty of other goodies they keep there when I was down there for the Euro Mini Convention. Talking to the people there, some thought it was a waste of time trying to restore them. But I've been told that in the aircraft world that hulks that would be considered to never be worth restoring 20 years ago are now very sought after. All it takes is on passionate induvidual like the late Bob Anderson, who restored K 88.
From looking at the parts, a new boiler would have to be made, but there is the dumped one to refer to. The rest of the parts look in a reasonable condition. There is plenty to at least restore one, if not two of the 13 origionally built in 1885, which is pretty amazing as they went out of service almost 100 years ago!
The locomotives at Omoto were dumped a lot later, and are whole locomotives opposed to the stripped hulks found in Branxholme.
Two Uc's and 1 La were recovered from there in 2005 and are stored awaiting overhaul.
See also:
http://www.whitebusfamily.co.nz/omoto_salvage.htmOther engines recovered from rivers in new Zealand include a pair of Wb 2-6-2T's , a Wd 2-6-4T, the W&MR Co's No.9, sister engine to the record breaking No.10 (2-6-2), some P 2-8-0's and a few more.
For a full list of preserved railway rolling stock, see:
[img=http://www.nzrsr.co.nz]http://www.nzrsr.co.nz[/img]
However, don't expect any of them to run any time soon. Keeping locomotives running is a challenging for most heritage railways, which are desperately short of volunteers. Most have a lot of other engines that have not run since the end of steam which are in a much better condition than these river hulks. In Glenbrook there are 7 steam locos that have either never been run in preservation or need major work done to them before they will steam again. Of course instead of sitting here in front of your computer daydreaming, you can help out your local vintage railway by volunteering, which is varied and fun. It will make a diffrence
Cheers,
Rick
