All steamed up and nowhere to go
For more than 20 years a dedicated band of Nelson volunteers have painstakingly restored an historic steam locomotive.
The Wf403 locomotive, which started work in Dunedin in 1907 before the Nelson City Council brought it north in 1973, has been stripped down to its chassis and rebuilt by Nelson Railway Society members to its former glory.
It was the same type of engine that operated on the Nelson-Glenhope line before the railway was closed in the 1950s, and is the only one of three Wf locomotives left in New Zealand to be fully restored.
A number of parts had to be remade from scratch, including the water tanks, cab floor and smoke box.
But the labour of love carried out from 2000 to 2021 by society members in the workshop at Founders Park hit a snag that stopped it in its tracks. Its boiler uses coal and that is not permitted under Nelson City Council air quality regulations.
The society was told an exemption was not possible, and it discovered the cost of running the engine on coal would probably have been too expensive. It has now put in a resource consent application for the engine to run on wood which was cheaper, more available, and less polluting.
Society general manager Peter Lewis-Smith said the society’s goal was to have the historic engine run around 15 times a year on the track around Founders Park.
“There’s a huge attraction about steam engines,” he said. “Diesel engines are fine but if there was a steam engine chugging along, people would come from all over the country.”
He hoped the application would resolved in the next couple of months, and if approved, the next step would be getting the boiler re-tested, a process that could cost up to $10,000.
Lewis-Smith thanked all the society members, past and present, who had spent countless hours on the engine, as well as donors who had contributed around $100,000 to the project.
He said there was a small core of active members, and the society was always looking for more. At 74, he was the second youngest member.
Nelson mayor Nick Smith said he was in awe of the restoration work carried out by the society members to get the engine ready to run.
The problem was that the air discharge plan for the city had no provision for a heritage train, unlike other councils that had an exemption built into their plans.
Smith said the council was working with the society on its consent bid. The process would involve an air expert looking at how much pollutants would be produced by a wood-fired engine and how that related to the discharge plan.
“I’m not as mayor able to say the approval will be granted. What I can say is that we’re doing everything we can to get to a solution and I’m very optimistic.”
By Warren Gamble, Nelson Mail
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