BRAKIE wabash2800 Researching and writing about railroads for a living, I can tell you that most stories like this are urban legends. Most locos that went under water were recovered. A very few were not, for various reasons. I think the ones already recounted here are fact, however. I have often wondered about that..Stories abound of Great Lake ships that sunk during storms with all hands and tells of gold and other treasures still laying on the bottom of the Great Lakes. Stories of sunken Railroad car ferries with their cargo.. Wasn't there a means of recovering the freight car's lading or was paying for the freight car and their loads cheaper?
wabash2800 Researching and writing about railroads for a living, I can tell you that most stories like this are urban legends. Most locos that went under water were recovered. A very few were not, for various reasons. I think the ones already recounted here are fact, however.
I have often wondered about that..Stories abound of Great Lake ships that sunk during storms with all hands and tells of gold and other treasures still laying on the bottom of the Great Lakes.
Stories of sunken Railroad car ferries with their cargo..
Wasn't there a means of recovering the freight car's lading or was paying for the freight car and their loads cheaper?
Sunk railroad ferrys are not urban legands. The SS Milwaukee went down in 1929 taking all 52 lives and 28 boxcars to the bottom of lake michigan. The wreck was not located until 1972. I have dove the site 4 times, I would say the cars are in fair condition at best. That ship took one H3LL of a beating before sinking. It seems most are single sheathed wood boxcars. some reduced to kindling and underframe. YES some still have their cargo in them, several with bathroom fixtures. One car with the siding mostly gone is full of cast iron bathtubs standing verticly. Atleast one was carring automobiles. This is in a heavily damaged area, the engineblock and frames are all that is recognizable every car is derailed and uncoupled, but not one broken knuckle(they uncoupled verticaly!). several cars are sideways inside the hull and one punched partway through the side. You can find videos on youtube.
Ann Arbor #5 is also in lake michigan, but only the stearn half, sinking on the way to be cut up for scrape.
Rere Marquette #18 went down in 1910, and there has still not been any publicly anounced finding of the wreck.
tim
There are stories like this probably in every location in the U.S. About 11 miles from where I am right now (Walker, MN) there is supposed to be a logging locomotive that went through the ice and is not real deep. In the winter, the Red River Logging Company (based out of Walker here) would lay tracks across the frozen lakes in the area to reach cleared land that couldn't be reached during the summer. Suposedly late in the spring, they tried to make one more trip and loco went through the ise. This stroy has been told to me by several people and varified by a scuba diver I know.
NP 2626 "Northern Pacific, really terrific"
Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association: http://www.nprha.org/
The sunken (in the Atlantic off Long Branch, NJ) locos that were described in the 2004 TV documentary that initiated the initial thread on this subject are still there, six miles off shore in 90 feet of water. While they were 'arrested' at the time (which was supposed to protect them from scavengers) they are now listed as a popular target for advanced scuba divers. I interpret that to mean that they are now well-plucked chickens.
The sheer expense of raising and conserving them has prevented any action in that direction by the discoverers. To get an idea of what that would entail, check out the expenses run up raising and conserving CSS Hunley.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Reference the two locos on Eagle Lake, Maine: Those in charge said it was part of Maine's logging history and wanted the locos to stay there. Perhaps it's not unlike the unwillingness of some states and countries to allow their ship wrecks to be exhumed. I did not make friends with the Park Service and my guide when I wrote about my feelings about that.
Unfortunately, more of the location has been looted since I was there in the 1980s, but I do admit it was very exciting to disembark from my canoe and began to notice things like a large, broken boat propeller on shore, skeletons of logging cars with their trucks, rails and then the two locos in the woods. The locos are not big by today's standards, but they look large in the woods when flanked by trees that have grown up around them. It's much the same effect when you see steam locomotives in a roundhouse. They seem bigger than life or bigger than you see them out on the railroad.
I have often toyed around with writing a book about the logging operation, though I'm deep in other book projects right now.
Victor A. Baird
www.erstwhilepublications.com
What railroad was involved in the Half Moon Lake accident? Any idea when this happened?
Tom
At the bottom of Half Moon Lake about 35miles north of Grand Rapids Michigan there is a whole freight train and the bridge it was crossing. This old steamer has been a diving target for at least 60 years and it has been down there a lot longer than that.
riogrande5761 What about that D&RGW standard gauge articulated steam engine buried in the old tunnel at Tennesee Pass which parallels the active tunnel (before the line was closed in 1996) =P
What about that D&RGW standard gauge articulated steam engine buried in the old tunnel at Tennesee Pass which parallels the active tunnel (before the line was closed in 1996) =P
Proven several times over to be a wild exaggeration.
I have several videos about Tennessee Pass from different commercial sources that all claim there is no truth to the rumor.
Victor I do remember your article in Trains. I have lived in Central Mass all of my life and have always been interested in New England railroading. Over the years there has been mention of these engines in several New England RR oriented publications. If I recall correctly there was a magazine called Downeast Magazine. over 45 years ago they published a softcover book that had all the railroad articles that they had published in the magazine. This was not a railfans collection of storys just general interest articles about Maine Railroading,some pretty good stuff. It had an article about Eagle Lake logging line. I will have to dig through my piles of "Stuff" to see if I can find it.
I have never been there .I do know it is a remote location. My best guess would be cost is the reason not much has been done with them.
Ron High
Why on earth would the State of Maine say 'no' to a locomotive restoration?
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Dave:
The smoke box covers were on when I visited back in the 80s but the stack from one loco was gone. I was told that even though it took a two day journey by canoe to get there, snowmobilers making the trek over land and frozen lakes in the winter have been taking "souvenirs". (Asbestos would be on the outside of the boiler underneath the sheet metal lagging that wraps around the boiler.) At one time a friend from the Dunkirk, New York Historical Society had a plan to bring the LS&MS 2-8-0 back to Dunkirk to where it was built by Brooks Loco Works but the state of Maine said No. Thus both locos have been rusting away and have been pilfered where they were parked when the logging operation quit.
The boilers were blown down and parked in the engine house but the Park Service torched all the buildings one winter including the engine house many years later when the park was initiated because of a fire hazard. Many skeletons of log dump cars sit around where the locos sit in the woods. As far as I know, the rail is still in place for the 13 mile RR.
It was a wonderful experience to visit this location when I did the magazine article research. Though the LS&MS/NYC 2-8-0 had been postively identified, there seems to still be controversy over the identify of the 4-6-0. The late Bill Edson, who had access to federal boiler records and visited the two locos in the 1960s when the ten-wheeler had traces of lettring from the Grasse River RR told me that it was built for a predecessor of the IHB. Bill was an authority on steam locos and wrote a number of RR books with rosters.
But there are still some that cling to the idea that the 2-8-0 is a Rutland engine. Back then Bill had a good laugh over that. His remark to me was, "Are they still insisiting on that?" I photographed the boiler number (not builder No.) on the steam dome of the 2-8-0 and it matched up with the federal boiler records that Bill had.) The builder plates, headlights, etc., etc had been pilfered long before the engine house was burnt down and Bill had made it up there in the 60s. I hope that answers your questions.
hon30critter Ron: I am glad to see that there is at least a basic effort being made to preserve the two locomotives. I'm also curious to know why the boiler fronts were removed. Was that part of the asbestos removal? Dave
Ron:
I am glad to see that there is at least a basic effort being made to preserve the two locomotives.
I'm also curious to know why the boiler fronts were removed. Was that part of the asbestos removal?
I have a pair of stories actually, I heard them at Toppenish Wa.'s NP museum when me and gramp visited. One was about the GS series locos the NP received, Nobody knows what happened to them or where they went after they were received.
Another involves Hanford, the Nuclear site in Eastern Washington.
Sometime during the 50's when the NP was servicing Hanford to of their locos became irradiated. the NP and Govt not wanting any residual effects buried them somewhere out there in the desert. When gramps worked for the DOT he was out by Hanford paving, needless to say he had an escort the whole time simply because of the way things were during the cold war.
SP&S modeler, 1960's give or take a decade or two for some equipment.
http://www.youtube.com/user/SGTDUPREY?feature=guide
Gary DuPrey
N scale model railroader
Checking E.D. Worley's book Iron Horses of The Santa Fe Trail (Southwest Railroad Historical Society, Philip M. Dybvig Inc., Box 29952, Dallas, TX 75229, copyright 1965; reprinted 1976), I found that at least two Santa Fe steam locomotives were lost in a flood in the Kaw River at Topeka on July 13, 1951. They were:
2-8-2 3167, Baldwin 1917, construction number 46964
2-6-2 1035, Baldwin 1901, construction number 19764 (rebuilt 1913)
I have heard this story in detail but don't recall the source. As I recall, there may have been more than two locos involved. They were positioned in a failed attempt to stabilize and hold down the track during the flood. They may have been on a bridge that gave way. I don't know Kansas geography. Is the Kaw the same as the Kansas River? Anybody wanna go swimming in the Kaw?
There are rumored to be a few steam locomotives in the area that are on the now abandoned Eglin AFB railroad in the woods along the old RoW
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eglin_Air_Force_Base_Railroad
In my mind, only someone who is daft would even begin looking in the wooded-over areas. The reason as the whole area is part of the remote range and local wildlife isn't exactly friendly.
Vincent
Wants: 1. high-quality, sound equipped, SD40-2s, C636s, C30-7s, and F-units in BN. As for ones that don't cost an arm and a leg, that's out of the question....
2. An end to the limited-production and other crap that makes models harder to get and more expensive.
is the story of 2 locomotives left in the Maine woods when the logging operations were stopped.
http://www.maine.gov/dacf/parks/discover_history_explore_nature/history/allagash/index.shtml
Funny you should bring that one up as I wrote an article about one of those two locomotives that included a description of the Maine operation in the July 1991 issue of Trains magazine! The title was From the Maine to the Orient. One of the two locos is the only existing Lake Shore & Michigan Southern locomotive in existence.
Thanks everyone for sharing your information.
I'm in the third of a five volume history of NP steam. As you can imagine, there's a LOT of detail. It seems that every wreck on the NP is mentioned, at least if it includes a locomotive with significant damage. In the early days, the builders were a little, uh, unconservative in their grading and bridge building. And so a number of locomotives went into the water. As far as I remember, they retrieved every one of them and returned them to operation.
In deep water, retrieval can cost more than the worth of the sunken locomotive. If so, there is no reason to raise it. Also, for railroad organizations that are capitally-challenged, such as small logging operations, retrieval might be impossible.
But it does seem that regular railroads just HATE to leave a locomotive by the side of the road.
Ed
There's a lost loco in the sand of a river in eastern Colorado along I-70. Kansas Pacific, IIRC, went through a washed out bridge circa 1870-ish and basically got buried in the quicksand at that spot. This story may have been in one of the CRRM Colorado Rail Annuals or maybe Trains, not sure.
With all the hidden track, mountains and various staging locations, I lose a loco from time to time, too. If it's a sound loco and still under power on the tracks, just need to toot the horn. If not, it gets more complicated...
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Here is the story of 2 locomotives left in the Maine woods when the logging operations were stopped.
I'll give you a shovel.
(My Model Railroad, My Rules)
These are the opinions of an under 35 , from the east end of, and modeling, the same section of the Wheeling and Lake Erie railway. As well as a freelanced road (Austinville and Dynamite City railroad).
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
wabash2800Researching and writing about railroads for a living, I can tell you that most stories like this are urban legends. Most locos that went under water were recovered. A very few were not, for various reasons. I think the ones already recounted here are fact, however.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Researching and writing about railroads for a living, I can tell you that most stories like this are urban legends. Most locos that went under water were recovered. A very few were not, for various reasons. I think the ones already recounted here are fact, however.
Here is one that is fact: In 1939, a Pacific, Boston & Maine No. 3666, and a passenger car went into the Piscataqua River near Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The engineer and fireman perished, but the rest of train crew and passengers survived, because when the air hose parted btw the first and second car, the rest of the train stopped. The locomotive is in deep, fast moving water, dangerous for divers, though some have been down there and viewed the locomotive. This incident has been verified and the loco is down there. Reportedly, it has been moved twice but not removed to make room for watercraft or because it was a potential hazzard for a nearby highway bridge. It's likely only the boiler and running gear have survived. Some artifiacts have been brought up and the B&M Historical Society has a part from the valve gear in its collection.
It's not a rumor. When the old turning pool for the Mainline Canal was filled a locomotive and other debry was tossed in.
The 4-4-0 of Richmond. A complete 1860's train is buried underneath Roanoke in the state of Virginia.
There is RUMORED to be a sunken locomotive in the city of Pittsburgh.
Plus I have put one on my eventual layout.
I believe it was in the Bay of Bengal where two Chinese built 2-8-2 Mikado steam engines being shipped to the U.S. for excursion railroads went overboard during a storm off the coast of India several years ago.
Lake Michigan has at least two car ferries that went down, and since thier discovery the cars look to be in far shape. Course since they are shipwrecks, at least in this case, they are graves, so getting the cars might present a bit of a problem. There are also rumors of a couple of logging engines and drag line stationary engines left in the woods of northern Wisconsin.
Sir Madog Dave, just copy and paste the link into the translater and hit the button translate.
Dave,
just copy and paste the link into the translater and hit the button translate.
Also, if you are using Google Chrome when you go to the site you will automatically get a dropdown that asks you if you want to translate. Vey handy.
Joe
Lake Erie has at least 2 1850 era steam locomotives laying on her bottom.According to the greal lake ship wreck book I read these locomotives was bound for the Rock Island Railroad.