Buried Locomotive Recovered in Florida

I couldn't find any posts on this, so I wanted to link to it:

http://www.theledger.com/article/201206 ... /120629722

MULBERRY | At first glance, it looked like little more than an abandoned pipe. But when a backhoe couldn't unearth it, crew members at Mosaic's mining operations near Mulberry began wondering what they had found.

They pulled out shovels and kept digging, and broad, iron wheels began to emerge.

"That's when I knew we were onto something," said Travis White, a superintendent with Moretrench American Corp., a subcontractor for Mosaic. "I just didn't know what."

As the earth gave way, the discovery began taking the shape of a large cannon.

"We hooked a strap on it and pulled it out," White said. "Once we got it out, we could see it was a train."

The crew had stumbled upon a relic from Polk County's past. Dating to the 1880s, the rusty Manchester steam locomotive had been buried in dirt and mud for nearly a century, local historians said.

"It looks like a Manchester 4-4-0," said Joe Spann, manager of the Polk County Genealogical Library and a local railroad historian.

"These are very rare, so this is an amazing find," he said.

But the implication extends beyond Polk County. Bob LaPrelle, president and chief executive officer of the Museum of the American Railroad in Dallas, confirmed Spann's opinion.

"It's relatively rare," he said. "Most steam locomotives that we've seen date from about 1900. Before that, there's not a lot of those around."

HI

Great find , the locomotive should be preserved as is , the dirt and rust are most likely keeping it intact , the engine should be preserved inside a building , so it does not derteariate anymore . Pat

"Restoring" this would be like cleaning an old silver coin. You just don't do it. If someone did want an operating version of the locomotive, making an all new replica of it would be better than desecrating the artifact just to end up with what would be a replica anyway. Designing either a replica or a restoration of something will never be completely accurate to the original design, and the more of the original design that can not be verified, the less accurate the new design will be.