29 Jan 2020

Lumsden locomotive emerges from mud after 93 years

From Checkpoint, 6:24 pm on 29 January 2020

A relic of New Zealand's rail past has emerged from the mud 93 years after being dumped in a Southland River.

The Lumsden Heritage Trust has been campaigning to retrieve the two 1885 V class steam locomotives from the Oreti River for about half a decade.

They're thought to be one of the last of their kind in the world. But retrieving them was no easy task as our reporter Tess Brunton found out.