Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Two old engines sit at Virginia Scrap Iron & Metal in Roanoke. An Ohio businessman has bought the 105-year-old engine on the left.

The builder of a roadside restaurant attraction in Ohio has claimed one of four steam engines abandoned in a Roanoke scrap yard.

Terry Byrne intends to haul off his find today aboard a supersized trailer.

"I want to let the engine live on," Byrne said.

Two cranes are scheduled to hoist the 105-year-old engine from a track to a trailer behind 1600 S. Jefferson St. this morning. A driver will haul the locomotive through Southwest Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky before reaching central Ohio.

With that, Roanoke will lose one of the historic railroad engines parked around the community in conditions ranging from restored to rusting out.

The engine bound for Ohio is a deteriorated, stripped-down Norfolk & Western Railway steam locomotive, No. 917, that belongs to a group owned for many years by Virginia Scrap Iron and Metal.

The scrap company, which is winding down its operations, authorized Byrne to remove No. 917. Byrne said he is getting the locomotive for free, but his relocation and refurbishment costs will come to about $70,000.

The Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority, which recently bought the scrap yard, confirmed that the engine is Byrne's to take by virtue of a previous deal.

Byrne said the engine will head up a roadside attraction outside Bellville beside Interstate 71 between Columbus and Cleveland.

He intends to couple the engine to a car and caboose already there, build a housing for a restaurant kitchen that resembles a train depot and operate a 24-hour diner.

The hope is motorists and locals will be drawn to the engine once it is rebuilt and repainted and grab a table in the car or caboose for something to eat.

Byrne, who owns a heavy equipment manufacturing company, said in Roanoke this week that he learned about the engine from a Web site and saw it as the ideal piece to complete his restaurant project. The engine stands as an example of the railroad "workhorses" that helped build the United States and is of great public interest.

In the end, "I'll have fake smoke coming out of the smokestack," Byrne said.

Byrne said he cleared years of overgrown vegetation and debris to reach the engine.

"It's like digging up an old grave," he said.

There were a few surprises along the way.

Although he selected the lightest and smallest of four steam locomotives present, its reported weight was 25,000 pounds too heavy for highway transport. It was also too tall, too long and too wide.

Using a blow torch and crane, he and others cut away parts including the cab and smoke stack to be reattached later. He thinks he brought the weight down to about 75 tons and the size to within specifications for a 138-foot trailer ordered for the move.

Mary Ann Ward, who worked for 30 years for the scrap yard, said she intends to be outside watching when the old engine leaves the tracks. It's been there since 1950.

"We're very interested in seeing it moved, as to how they're going to do it," she said.

The engine's extraction will have a certain must-see quality for rail fans, who have rooted from near and far for someone to come along with the cash to save the locomotives.

Richard Jenkins is a Web designer in Lawrence, Mass., who posted pictures and data at his site called "The Lost Engines of Roanoke."

"These things definitely don't belong in a junkyard. They belong in a museum somewhere. So it's definitely good to see at least one of them going to a good home," he said.

"The steam locomotive is really the closest mankind has come to [building] a living machine. If you stand next to the thing, you feel the warmth of the boiler, and you smell the hot oil and coal smoke."

It moves with a sense of purpose and power, he said. "Very few machines these days have that kind of charisma."