Mosaic Crew Uncovers Manchester Locomotive Built in 1880s

Anybody else hear about this recently discovered locomotive in Florida?
This board seems to have interest in all locomotives buried. It doesn't look like the underground is a good place for preservation, but it is interesting that some detail is still present, like one of the snifters.

A lot has been lost, but the artifact covers a lot of time. That would be an amazing journey to look over the details that surely remain in that old hulk. It is not a candidate for restoration, but probably a good a vessel of histoical information.

This loco was found a couple of years ago near Mulberry, FL in the phosphate mining area. I think it is now at the Phosphate Museum in Mulberry.

How do we know it was built by Manchester?

-Jim Herron

I was wondering the same thing. Maybe the cylinder castings could give a clue, but the drivers do not look like the Manchester drivers commonly seen on 1880-era Manchester locomotives.

This is the classic "locomotive-in-a-quarry".

Do you know if they have displayed this locomotive at the museum, and if so, what have they done to it between the recovery and the display?

Has any historical account of this locomotive been discovered?

hit it with a nail gun, it'll start cleaning up.

Hit something from that era that's been underground/underwater for that long with a needle gun, and it'll collapse into a heap of iron oxide.

I know of someone who did something like that and learned the hard way.

It looks like they found it with an excavator catching the smoke box. I assume that is what is lying separate in the foreground. But I am really curious what the museum did to the locomotive or what they plan to do. It is very interesting that they rolled it out of the pond on its wheels as they turned. The challenge will be to display it in some type of meaningful way. I suspect that there are still a lot of solid and intact parts there even though it appears to be a stripped out hulk.

If it were my call, I would not build a new cab and cowcatcher, and paint it to make a cosmetic display.

The most important question is:

"When's it going to be running?"

The most important question is "How can we conserve it before it naturally disintegrates?" That's one big electrolysis tank, people.....

dave

I do not know what disintegration issues it poses. I understand that this is critical with salt water immersion, but I do not know how it applies to circumstances of this locomotive. I have dug up old iron artifacts that have heavy corrosion, but show no signs of accelerating deterioration or complete disintegration once recovered.

It would be interesting to learn what the museum has in mind for this recovered engine. In terms of age, condition, and water submersion, it reminds me of that logging engine that I recall being recovered from the Suwannee River.

If I understand electrolysis correctly, you just reverse the polarity and the engine should reassemble itself... right?

Only if you use it with selective temporal redaction. Otherwise it just cleans out the molecules a bit to make the material less prone to accelerated decomposition.

No idea if electrolysis or another technlique would be most appropriate here - Florida is a bit of rootbound mud floating on an underground swamp so burial isn't the time-capsule kind of thing you'd find in a desert climate.

dave

This is quite an amazing find! Just when we thought we found all of the 4-4-0 engines that have been left derelict in the country! It would be nice if they could restore it and recover or reproduce the missing components like with the Roanoke engines...

I believe there are locomotives of this era that are lost history, with no historical record or human memory of the loss. This one apparently was one of those. But I do not see their value as being in the basis of obtaining a locomotive for operation or even restoration. I think their value is much more subtle than that.

I'm reminded of the Rogers K 28 (?) class 2-4-0's that were dug up after decades as riprap from the banks of a river in New Zealand......at least one was restored to operating condition for a while. I believe it didn't last too many years in subsequent use, which might indicate that recovered buried machinery has lost critical robustness......or not, of course, each case must be different from all others in some respects. Does anyone know exactly what happened?

dave