Some of these locomotives and wagons have been recovered by heritage groups with the aim of restoring them to operating condition, including WMR No.

During the early 1920s, NZR used a former quarry near Cora Lynn station as an open-air workshop to strip locomotives of useful parts before they were dumped.

This quarry was host to a number of locomotive parts including the frame of V 132, which had been retrofitted with Walschaerts valve gear in 1898 as an experiment by NZR.

Shortly after this frame was salvaged in 1997–98, Tranz Rail and the Department of Conservation initiated a clean-up operation in the old quarry, burying many of the locomotive parts there into the access embankment.

These carriages would be brought from Addington Railway Workshops in Christchurch, shunted into the riverbed, and then burnt to recover their metal parts for scrap or as spares for other operating vehicles.