Elephant's Graveyard

[johncolley]

A couple of years ago I happened upon an awesome scene near Tacoma WA. It reminded me of the legendary place where the elephants go to die. There were tracks of once grandly proud in their new paint, now shabby, peeling, and decrepit locomotives in line waiting to be dismantled and cut up for scrap. It was a very sad and sobering sight. A lesson in life perhaps.

[Anonymous]

When I was 10-12 years old in the early 1960s, I lived in the Twin Cities, but, my folks had a place in Northern Minnesota. One time we drove there via Staples Minnesota. In the yard at Staples wre literally miles of steam engines on several tracks. Since both the N.P. and the G.N shared trackage in this area, I would guess this was both RR's equipment. I think there were 100s of them there. Yes, it was sad!!

[Anonymous]

Things like this are indeed very saddening to see and yet somehow also fascinating. The closest I've come to any of your stories was a scrapyard in Regina, Saskatchewan. They had a huge area with truckless freight cars literally piled up in heads, waiting to be scrapped. Some of these lookd like they had been damagedin accidents, but others didn't seem to have much wrong with them. Now, they're all gone and only a few cars remain.

Also, I saw a place in Selkirk, Manitoba called Mandak, that is a scrapyard that exclusively deals with the railroads. Mainly what I could see was piled of crap metal, with a few old cars sitting amoungst them. A very eerie place.

There are some good scrapyard stories, though. In Roanoke, WV, there are some old N&W steam locomotives that are sitting on the site of a scrapyard that closed in 1950. Right now there is a group that is working to retore them.

Also, in Britain, there was the fomous Barry scrapyard. It was the home to hundreds of British Railways steam locomotives and all except for 2 or 3 of them were saved and are currently preserved. Many of those engines that were once rusting away are now working hard on tourist railways.