Photos by ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

At left, one of the "Lost Engines" is removed from the scrap yard in August.

Rick Rader with the Roanoke chapter of the National Railway Historical Society sand blasts the 1134 boiler at the rail yard.

Scott Henderson (left) and other workers restore the cab of the 1134 at North Fork Lumber in Goshen.

Eddie Mooneyham (left), Tony McCray and Rick Rader with the Roanoke chapter of the National Railway Historical Society work on the 1134.

Welder Howard Johnson at work on the 1134.

Owen Wood paints the 1134 at the 9th Street rail yard of the Roanoke chapter of the National Railway Historical Society last week. The owner of North Fork Lumber, Will Harris, is a rail enthusiast who spearheaded the restoration work.

All of the rust is gone. The gaping holes are patched and sanded so smooth you'd never know they were holes. The cab has better wood paneling than most rec rooms, and the yellow-gold lettering on the tender says "Norfolk and Western" once again.

The M2 class 1134 steam locomotive -- better known as one of "Lost Engines of Roanoke" -- has not only been found, but it's nearly all fixed up. The century-old locomotive is in the final stages of a cosmetic restoration, and will likely be moved to a Portsmouth museum within the next few weeks, said Goshen lumberyard owner Will Harris, who spearheaded the restoration work.

The locomotive's painstakingly restored tender, which once held coal and water for producing steam, already has been trucked to its new home at the Railroad Museum of Virginia in Portsmouth.

"The tender looks like new," said Harris, who hauled the tender to Portsmouth on an 18-wheeler two weeks ago.

The locomotive itself will be moved in three pieces via rail car, trailer and possibly 18-wheeler, Harris said. The exact date is a moving target, and depends on when Norfolk Southern Corp. makes a flat car available.

"I really can't tell you" when the flat car will arrive, Harris said. "I'm just waiting on the railroad. It's probably going to be next week. The tender's down there. It's sitting on the track. We're real close to the end."

The 1134 was cut into pieces to make it easier to move from an overgrown side spur at the former Virginia Scrap Iron and Metal Co. last summer. The pieces were restored separately. The locomotive's cab and tender were restored at Harris' North Fork Lumber business in Goshen, while the boiler and wheels were worked on in Roanoke, at the National Railway Historical Society's Ninth Street rail yard.

The rail journey to Portsmouth could take several days, NRHS member Eddie Mooneyham said. The pieces of the locomotive will have to be welded back together once they are all in Portsmouth. Estimates of how long the reassembly will take range from days to weeks.

Here in Roanoke, welder Howard Johnson and NRHS members still were putting the finishing touches on the locomotive's boiler and wheel assembly last week.

The primer-coated pieces were getting their top coat of black paint Tuesday.

The cab -- where the engineer once sat -- has been finished for weeks. Harris plans to take it to Portsmouth himself, on a trailer behind his pickup truck.

"It just turned out really nice," Harris said.

Lost and found

Before their improbable rescue late last summer, the 1134 and its ancient steam brethren were often referred by rail buffs as "The Lost Engines." In fact, they were visible along the railroad tracks behind the scrap yard off Jefferson Street for decades, and many people worked to save them. Until last year, however, the cost of moving the engines from their overgrown siding had been a major stumbling block.

As the decades passed, the condition of the locomotives steadily deteriorated. A 2004 newspaper article described them as "badly rusted and overgrown by vines, with leaves and refuse in their boilers and locomotive pieces scattered about. A smokestack lies near one of them in the dirt."

Most of the locomotives were donated to the Virginia Museum of Transportation a few years ago, with the caveat that the museum arrange for moving them. A fourth steam locomotive -- a small N&W switch engine -- was acquired by the builder of an Ohio restaurant attraction and moved there in 2008.

Last year, a complex deal finally was struck to move the remaining engines out of the scrap yard, involving the transportation museum, the Railroad Museum of Virginia, the NRHS and Harris. The Portsmouth museum agreed to foot the bill for moving all of the locomotives in return for one of them -- the 1134. A board member at the Portsmouth museum, Joe Donnelly, gave the cost of the project last summer as "less than a quarter of a million" dollars.

When all the wheeling and dealing was done, the NRHS owned one of the engines, the 1118. Both the 1134 and the 1118 were made for N&W by Baldwin Locomotive Works in Pennsylvania.

A third "Lost Engine," the 1151, was made in the Roanoke Shops, and is now at the Virginia Museum of Transportation awaiting restoration.

Vanished age

The three M2 class steam locomotives rescued from the scrap yard last summer all date from 1910 to 1912. Some other rolling stock, including later-model diesel engines, was recovered from the scrap yard as well -- but the M2s were the cream of the rusty crop.

Originally used by N&W as long-haul workhorses, the M2s were soon supplanted by more powerful locomotives -- but they continued to be used as switch engines for many years, rail historians say. Steam buffs know them by their 4-8-0 wheel configuration, which was associated with Norfolk and Western. The rest of us can simply appreciate them as relics of the vanished time.

Now that the 1134 has been restored, or nearly so, what will happen to the other two steam locomotives? NRHS members have been working for months on one of them, the 1118, and eventually plan to exhibit it at the transportation museum in Roanoke.

Work on the transportation museum's own "Lost Engine," the 1151, has not begun. The museum already has numerous steam engines, including the legendary 611 and 1218.

"We have not done anything on our locomotive," museum Executive Director Bev Fitzpatrick said recently. "Didn't plan to. Our goal was to save it and work on it as money permits."

Rail buffs have followed the restoration of the 1134 closely, and a chat site devoted to the project on the Railway Preservation News Web site contains multiple entries.

"More has happened to these engines in about 6 months than [in] the 50 years sitting in the scrap yard," was one comment. (Check back in a few weeks for a full story detailing the engine's restoration process, from beginning to end.)

The Portsmouth museum, where the 1134 is bound, is an 11-year work in progress and currently owns 10 rail cars, said Willard Moody, museum board president.

It has long coveted a steam locomotive.

"We are very excited about the 1134 and the tender," Moody said.