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X Files: Padlocked Mystery Rail Car Under Waldorf Astoria

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X Files: Padlocked Mystery Rail Car Under Waldorf Astoria
Posted by wallyworld on Monday, October 2, 2006 10:27 PM
Interesting story about an abandoned military car two stories beneath a hotel in New York. The link is below.



http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/scn-sa-rrties1sep27,0,7683933.story?page=2&coll=stam-news-local-headlines

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Monday, October 2, 2006 10:30 PM
     Where's Geraldo?  This might be Al Capone's train!Wink [;)]

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

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Posted by Anonymous on Monday, October 2, 2006 10:39 PM
This subject was flogged on Railway Preservation News' Interchange last week see: http://rypn.sunserver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=threads&p=92283&t=21397&sid=28e3c25824a40f62d70ac6645f6cafad
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Posted by wallyworld on Monday, October 2, 2006 10:55 PM
Did anyone identify it's owner? I was hoping they would find a mint condition, armor plated Pierce Arrow lying inside under a foot of dust, but more than likely it will be a petrified baloney sandwich.

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Posted by mudchicken on Monday, October 2, 2006 11:03 PM
FDR's ghost...and Fala's too.......
Mudchicken Nothing is worth taking the risk of losing a life over. Come home tonight in the same condition that you left home this morning in. Safety begins with ME.... cinscocom-west
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Posted by eastside on Tuesday, October 3, 2006 12:22 AM
Almost every time I take MetroNorth I take a glance at the Waldorf Astoria platform as the train passes.  You can't miss it because the WA is only about two blocks out of GCT and every outbound train is on the next track.  It's well lit, as if it's still being used, but I've never seen a car standing at the platform, and I've been doing this since the early '80s.  It must be at some distance away from the platform.  I've seen pictures of FDR using the platform.

More interesting is that so vast is the underground trackage (don't forget GCT has several levels) that there are rumored to be over a hundred derelicts living at least part time there.  I would have thought that one of them would have gotten into the "mystery" car long ago.
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Posted by daveklepper on Tuesday, October 3, 2006 6:58 AM
I recently read a report that Metro North had taken steps to clear out derelicts, and is int he process of installing security equipment to prevent their return.
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Posted by vsmith on Tuesday, October 3, 2006 8:50 AM

   Have fun with your trains

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Posted by chad thomas on Tuesday, October 3, 2006 9:03 AM

Is this the original shackle car?Alien [alien]

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Posted by Clutch Cargo on Tuesday, October 3, 2006 10:32 AM
Perhaps it is the secret love nest of Judge Crater.

Any booze and chorus girls in there?

kurt

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Posted by dknelson on Tuesday, October 3, 2006 5:14 PM

Roswell!  Roswell!  oooooo

actually the descriptions sounds like an ordinary converted troup sleeper which would explain the special unusual suspension, the military (i.e. Pullman) green paint showing through the blue, and the plating over the windows that would look like armour.   It might also explain the X if it was in MOW service

 

Addendum: looking more closely at the picture it clearly is not a former troop sleeper but some sort of baggage car.  The story gets ever more interesting .... maybe I was right the first time -- this is the alien autopsy car!

Dave Nelson

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Posted by samfp1943 on Tuesday, October 3, 2006 6:33 PM

Pretty interesting story, underground in NYC for how long? And No graffiti!  Hard to imagine...

Hopefully, someone will update this posting when Richard Stravopoli gets it open. Kinda looks like an old baggage car from the picture. It will be quite a story when the details are put together.

 

 


 

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Posted by espeefoamer on Tuesday, October 3, 2006 8:13 PM

HMMM... Heavily armored,millitary green paint showing through.Evil [}:)]

Anything in there besides  SHACKLES??? Alien [alien] Alien [alien] Alien [alien]

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Posted by wallyworld on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 8:00 AM
Last night, PBS aired a show about "secrets" of New York and it featured a segment on this car. There was a gentleman from the transit authority ( Metro North?) who felt very strongly that the car was left docked at the platform in 1945 at the time of Roosevelt's death. He also felt very confident that this car was dedicated to carrying Roosevelt's Pierce Arrow..hence the specialty trucks, armour plating etc. I have no idea if his confidence is founded on facts, it sounded more like an educated guess. The only fly in the ointment in this theory is, based on what little I have seen of the car, there appear to be no doors situated in relation to a large automobiles turning radius to allow it to be off loaded on a narrow platform..

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Posted by oltmannd on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 9:32 AM
Looks like a plain old baggage car to me.  How can they tell armor plating by just looking at it?  Looks like regular old passenger trucks, too, unless they are 3 axle trucks which would make them unusual for a 60' baggage car and would support the armor claim.  Wish they'd published some better pix.....

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Posted by railroad65 on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 9:51 AM
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Posted by wallyworld on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 10:06 AM
A case of much ado about nothing? It would not surprise me as a run of the mill tool car doesnt have much tourist related charisma. Intentionally priming the dollar pump by feeding the rumour mill aka Roswell NM, does everyone a disservice, if the posting on Preservation News is to be believed, whose correct identification of the car is likely. Mark Twain identified the problem correctly, to paraphrase him; Everything I know I read in the newspaper.

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Posted by oltmannd on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 10:20 AM

In the story the mark is reported as MNMCX - which, of course has one too many letters to be a valid mark.  The article aludes to "X" meaning something extraordinary, like military, but we all know that just means it's a private car.

Looking up AAR marks, MN and MNCW belong to Metro North.  Wanna bet when the guys went down to slap a coat of paint on that car to change it from PC green to blue, they misread the new mark?

UMLER has MNCW 10, 11, 12 as AAR cartype M190, "store supply car".  Shows built in Sept 1941 and 85' long - rebuilt in 1994.

I'm thinking the car in question is a cousin to these......

 

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Posted by Anonymous on Friday, June 22, 2007 9:36 PM

I just joined this forum and was intrigued by the "Mystery Train". I am probably a year late and the mystery already know to all of you train X-perts. 

This is what I know about it:

It is FDR's personal rail car that had a ramp to help him get into the Waldorf Astoria unseen by the public. This was done to conceal his polio. The X which makes it one letter too many indicates that the rail car did not belong to the railroad, but to the gov't. It is armor plated and has gun turrets on top.

I saw this on the History Channel. 

 

 

 

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Posted by csxengineer98 on Saturday, June 23, 2007 3:01 AM

the history chanel did a show on this car in question about 3 weeks ago.. i cant remember what the titel of it is off the top of my head..but it is a seriouse of shows about what is underground of differnt cities of the world...for example..the ruines of the old eastern roman empire under istanbul and the caticomes under paris... the car in question did belong to Rosovelt and was used to transport him and his armord car...

csx engineer 

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Posted by kenneo on Saturday, June 23, 2007 5:12 AM

OK.  So where is the proof. 

All the "X" means is that the car is not railway owned - as in "Private Car Line" other than AMTK qualified passenger equipment.

Csxeng. -- not trying to be snooty, here, but where is the proof - such as a car number or some other documentation.  Otherwise, even if what we think we know is true, all we really know is that we have a fine story.

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Posted by eolafan on Saturday, June 23, 2007 6:08 AM
Guys, I can't prove it, but I strongly suspect the assertions of the fellow from the GCT staff who spoke about this car on the Discovery Channel was engaged in typical hype for New York City...he looked and sounded like a typical New Yorker (since I was born and raised there I get to say such things myself)...that being half truth, half BS for effect.
Eolafan (a.k.a. Jim)
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Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 23, 2007 7:37 AM
 kenneo wrote:

OK.  So where is the proof. 

All the "X" means is that the car is not railway owned - as in "Private Car Line" other than AMTK qualified passenger equipment.

Csxeng. -- not trying to be snooty, here, but where is the proof - such as a car number or some other documentation.  Otherwise, even if what we think we know is true, all we really know is that we have a fine story.

The proof would have been presented on the Discovery.  I have personally not seen this episode, but Discovery Channel usually goes for the truth.  Just like on the Titanic Mystery.  Discovery Channel has all of the people working together to figure out what really happened.

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Posted by Kurn on Saturday, June 23, 2007 12:04 PM
 If this was such a big deal,someone would have checked it out long ago.The reporting marks are in white paint,not faded,so aren't 60 years old.They read MNCX 01.Metro-North is not that old,so somebody added the marks fairly recently.So Metro-north certainly knows about it.This has been on at least 3 different shows,with people saying they are going to check into it.Maybe the History Channel is planning a "special" where they cut the lock and look inside.

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Posted by tdmidget on Saturday, June 23, 2007 4:32 PM

The real mystery here is how you could be so gullible. LISTEN to this clown. Everything is amazing and mysterious. He claimed that if the old grand central power rectification systen was sabotaged that the entire war effort would have come to a stop because ALL war materiel passed thru there. You believed that? All war materiel for the East coast passed thru a subway station? He rants about "underground rivers" as tho you could fish in them. He claimed that all you had to do was throw a handfull of sand in the "converters" (motor generator sets) and the gears would be destroyed. There no gears in an mg set. He claimed that the trucks were "overengineered" . They did not even have roller bearings.He looks at the side sill and claims that the sides are at least an inch thick.

 Do not believe anything you here on these shows. Recently on Mail Call Ermey cliamed that the B36 bomber had turbo prop engines!.

These people are slipshod at best in there research. This particular show was the worst I've seen.

If you complain to them about factual errors you get a form letter thanking you for your interest.

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Posted by Kurn on Saturday, June 23, 2007 9:03 PM
Gee,I didn't know that R-4360's were turboprops! Anyway,the History channel is sadly lacking in details,for instance calling the Japanese battleship Yamato the Yamamoto,saying the TGV was the first train to go 200 mph(the Mistal was,in 1955),and so on.I'll be curious to see how the upcoming show about scrapping trains goes.

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Posted by Anonymous on Monday, June 25, 2007 8:26 PM

Actually the Borsig DRG Series 05 002  4-6-4 Was the first to set a steam speed record on 5-11-1936.  Speed was 200.4.

-First Diesel Was the DRG SVT 137  :Bauart Leipzig In Germany on 2-17-1936

So far the fastest rocket train is an unmanned rocket sled.  Speed was 6453 MPH.

 

All of this info was found on the link below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_railed_vehicles

 

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Posted by Jack_S on Monday, June 25, 2007 8:36 PM

The History Channel has had some real howlers too, unrelated to RRs.  I was watching an HC show titled "The Revolution" some years ago (with Walter Cronkite narrating, no less). 

In solemn tones Cronkite described the British, before the battle of Saratoga, sending an expedition to outflank the Americans by going up the "St. Lawrence Seaway" to Lake Ontario and then east along the Mohawk River to Albany.  Cronkite, of course, was just reading the script he was given.

Yes, such an expedtion did happen, foiled by the battle of Oriskany and the arrival of an American detachment under Benedict Arnold.  But the St. Lawrence Seaway wasn't finished until the Eisenhower Administration, and was barely a dream in the 1770s.

And every time some show on Rome refers to Julius Caesar as being a Roman Emperor, I grit my teeth.  Every so often they refer to Caesar as a brilliant general who made a play for political power, when the opposite is really true.  After a very successful political career, Caesar made a successful play for a plum military command, and succeeded in that as well.  It was when he tried to return to politics that the trouble began.

Jack

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Posted by csxengineer98 on Monday, June 25, 2007 10:15 PM

 Kurn wrote:
 If this was such a big deal,someone would have checked it out long ago.The reporting marks are in white paint,not faded,so aren't 60 years old.They read MNCX 01.Metro-North is not that old,so somebody added the marks fairly recently.So Metro-north certainly knows about it.This has been on at least 3 different shows,with people saying they are going to check into it.Maybe the History Channel is planning a "special" where they cut the lock and look inside.
kinda hard for paint to fade if its underground and not getting exposed to sunlight.. and the time limit in question is how long the car has been parked there.. not if it was origanly metro equipment or not...

csx engineer 

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Posted by coborn35 on Monday, June 25, 2007 10:32 PM
 Jack_S wrote:

The History Channel has had some real howlers too, unrelated to RRs.  I was watching an HC show titled "The Revolution" some years ago (with Walter Cronkite narrating, no less). 

In solemn tones Cronkite described the British, before the battle of Saratoga, sending an expedition to outflank the Americans by going up the "St. Lawrence Seaway" to Lake Ontario and then east along the Mohawk River to Albany.  Cronkite, of course, was just reading the script he was given.

Yes, such an expedtion did happen, foiled by the battle of Oriskany and the arrival of an American detachment under Benedict Arnold.  But the St. Lawrence Seaway wasn't finished until the Eisenhower Administration, and was barely a dream in the 1770s.

And every time some show on Rome refers to Julius Caesar as being a Roman Emperor, I grit my teeth.  Every so often they refer to Caesar as a brilliant general who made a play for political power, when the opposite is really true.  After a very successful political career, Caesar made a successful play for a plum military command, and succeeded in that as well.  It was when he tried to return to politics that the trouble began.

Jack

I bet he was talking the present day seaway.

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