Oamaru locomotive dump

It was located on the coastline in the North Otago town of Oamaru to stabilise land used by New Zealand Railways for their freight yards.

Despite the construction of a mole to make the Oamaru harbour more suitable for shipping, this provided no protection for the railway land.

As a part of this, most of the remains of the dump site were removed from the foreshore with some handed over to the Oamaru Steam and Rail Restoration Society for safekeeping.

Today the dump site is largely non-existent although the remains of at least 1 Canterbury J Class engine is still in place on the foreshore, having never been recovered for an unknown reason.

Not all of the above existed on the foreshore by the time OnTrack removed the remains in 2008 - some locomotives had been destroyed by wave and rust action, or in at least one case believed to have been sucked out to sea (F 156).