Jim,
Now, I can't read the Chinese, but below the photos of the unearthed locomotive, there's a giant photo of a particularly familiar Northern.

A poster isn't suggesting that a 4-8-4 was buried there, was he?

Many thanks to Mike Laplante for forwarding the details to Bob Koch.

Bob has kindly contacted me and has been able to fill in many of the
missing details which I have taken the liberty of summarising for the
group as follows:-

The loco is one of 121 Baldwin 4-cylinder Vauclain compound 2-8-0s
built for the Chinese Eastern Railway between 1898 and 1900 (running
numbers 151-271). The Baldwin plate 16117 would put it in the batch
of running numbers 176-200. (If the running numbers are sequential
with the works numbers the loco would be 178 - Roy).

Bob confirms that Fuyu County is in Jilin Province and believes that
the incident took place at the Lalin River bridge on the mainline
between Changchun and Harbin at which point the river forms the
border between Jilin and Heilongjiang Provinces.

It would seem that this is an incredibly significant find and we can
only hope that the intention to preserve the loco at the Shenyang
Railway Museum comes to fruition.

It would seem that the relevant authorities are aware of the loco's
significance, but if any group members have any useful contacts, it
might be helpful to stress its historical importance.

Thanks to everyone,

Roy.

Reported today (April 6th) that retrieval of the loco will begin
tomorrow at 10:00 hours and the event will be covered by Heilongjiang
Television. It would appear that the key players, including the
manager of the Shenyang Railway Museum, will be present. For more
information, it is reported that there is a hotline 0451-8289000
(don't know if this can be accessed outside China) and info on the
Heilongjiang Television website.

Let's hope that there aren't any last minute problems!