Hundreds of Dunedin residents celebrated the Double Fairlie steam locomotive's 145th birthday at Toitu Otago Settlers Museum yesterday, including Skye O'Leary (5), who really got into the celebration by dressing up as Josephine.
She said she had been Josephine's biggest fan since her parents read her Dianne Miller's book Josephine Off the Rails.
``She's fixated with Josephine,'' her mother Jinean Sinclair said.
``Every time we drive past the museum, we have to come and see her.''
Josephine - affectionately known as Dunedin's grand old lady - began her career on the Dunedin-Port Chalmers Railway.
She was one of two Double Fairlie locomotives brought from England to operate the railway in 1872.
She went on to work on other railway lines around New Zealand, before being retired 45 years later.
Somehow, Josephine avoided the scrapheap, and since the 1920s she has been on display at the museum.
Up until the 1960s, she remained exposed to the elements on the lawn outside the museum, but a campaign to save her in the late 1960s resulted in her being restored and moved indoors.
She is one of only a handful of surviving Double Fairlies left in the world, and train spotters come from around the globe to see her.
