The Lumsden Heritage Trust has recovered three JC Class sheep wagons, two of which will be used in its growing historic railways collection.

Parts from two of the wagons will be fabricated by Bulleid Engineering of Winton to make a complete underframe for a C Class passenger carriage, which the trust is planning to recover soon from a residential property in Winton.

The third wagon will be repaired to its original condition by Project Steam Middlemarch, for its heritage rail collection.

Lumsden Heritage Trust chair John Titter says trust’s “A-team” of contractors carefully hauled the wreckage of the wagons up a steep gully near Hyde, in Central Otago, on Friday.

Three railway sheep wagons discovered at the bottom of a gully in Middlemarch. Photo: Supplied

When retired by New Zealand Railways, three of the wagons were placed at the top of the gully to prevent erosion of the hillside.

However, on 30 July 1977 they slid into the gully following snow and heavy rain. 

In the 45 years since then, scrub had all but hidden them from sight.  

Titter says the recovery operation went relatively smoothly considering the difficult terrain, thanks to the efforts of a highly skilled group of southern contractors who have worked on a series of similar projects since early 2020.

The historic wagons were recovered with the help of some heavy modern day machinery. Photo: Supplied

He says the gradient on the hillside was around 45 degrees at its steepest. 

“I don’t know how they did it. There was a lot of weight there. They would have been pulling around 10 tonnes. It was just incredible.”

JC wagons were built in New Zealand in the 1940s and 1950s and were used by New Zealand Railways to transport stock until road transport became the preferred option in the late 1970s. 

The 20-foot-long (six-metre) wagons had timber frames and two decks.

Lumsden Heritage Trust secretary-treasurer Rob Scott says the trust wanted to recover the wagons for their under-frames, which includes the chassis, wheels, and axle sets.

“The beauty of it is that the axles, headstocks, buffers and frame are all complete,” Scott says. “We looked at building [an underframe for a C Class passenger carriage] from scratch but the cost of the recovery and getting it to Winton was cheaper, and we don’t have to look for any other parts.”

On top of the underframe fabrication, Bulleid Engineering is also stripping down the 1880 D Class steam locomotive D6, which the trust recently acquired from Ocean Beach Railway in Dunedin.

Mark Hindle, Owner of Bulleid Engineering, says while his business is usually focused on agricultural, forestry and transport machinery, he is used to doing up old things, having worked on his 2 classic muscle cars for last ten years. 

Workmen check the wagons upon delivery to Bulleid Engineering's Winton yard. Photo: Supplied

He says the job on the JC class wagons will involve cutting one in half, installing another set of wheels, and stripping both wagons down to sand blast and tidy up. 

Hindle says the work on the D6 locomotive is a bit more of a challenge, and will require work through the winter months during the agricultural off-season.

“It’s more of a museum piece so the boiler [of the locomotive] doesn’t have to work, it just has to look like it works,” he says. 

Titter says that the restored D6 and the yet-to-be-recovered Winton carriage (C100) will form part of a unique heritage display at the Lumsden Railway Precinct in northern Southland.

“The plan is that D6 will sit at the front of the current carriages to create a pre-1900s heritage train consisting of carriages ranging from 1877 (C100) to 1883 (A199) to 1896 (A525)”

“This will be a heritage line-up not seen for possibly 70-plus years. It’s going to be great for Lumsden.”