Anyone have any idea what this mystery car under the hotel might be?

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/lo ... -headlines

Most likely a standard New York Central baggage car. There is also a ex-NYC express boxcar in the same area that retains its NYC lettering. Both would be worth preserving indoors - as their indoor storage to this point will likely have left them in much better condition than others from the class.

The analysis used by by the secret service agent is laughable (I will probably de-bunk it later here when I have the time) - even more funny than that coming from those who think Amtrak's Beech Grove shop is really a FEMA concentration camp. What is scary is that is comes from an agency that is supposed to specialize in investigative work.

Tom Cornillie

No need to debunk.

Evidently the hallmarks of "The Great Steel Fleet" such as heavyweight car construction and Pullman Green paint can be mistaken for "light armor" and "military green paint."

Plus, I always thought the reason the "Ferdnand Magellan" was lettered "Pullman" was to let it "fit in" and not attract attention.


More here:

http://www.newyorkology.com/archives/2006/02/waldorfastorias.html

and
http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/gct61.html[/i]

If this is any indication of the way the "Secret Service" works...... so what color are those $25 bills supposed to be, anyway?

It's a plain old NYC 60-ft heavyweight bag, the kind they had hundreds of (like the PRR's B-60s), and after the passenger train era ended, there were plenty that hung around odd corners of the property. This one was the tool and blocking car for the double-ended electric wrecker, GCT #1, that MNCR sent to Danbury Rwy Museum a few years ago. I seem to recall that one end of the bag is badly rotted from sitting under a leaky pipe in the ceiling. The area where this car is, and where the GCT #1 was, is the old "49th Street Engine House" area, the tracks where NH and some NYC motors could be sanded and watered (boiler water) during their GCT turnaround.

The other car mentioned is simply an NYC express car, a post-WW2 troop sleeper conversion, with the typical NYC outside sliding boxcar door instead of the inside "baggage-type" door that many roads used for these conversions. Again, it was used for storage, probably of loco supplies.

But what about the "intricate" suspension system? Oh wait, it's a standard 6 wheel truck for heavyweight passenger cars.....

"Those are all questions Staropoli plans to address after he finishes his investigation, which started about three months ago after he watched a television show on what exists in the tunnels under New York City."

All because he saw it on tv??? YIKES! ;-)

Hard to beleive the car would be unknown, unseen, and still completely locked up all these years, when the evidence suggests people have been around it on some level of activity over the years. (As evidenced by the trash and specifically, plastic soda bottles)

While I commend the man for his honesty, how many people wouldn't have snapped one of those padlocks off at the first opportunity to peer inside ?

Strange story all around, still be interesting to hear what is or isn't found inside. As noted, we may be closer to another Geraldo type ending than any other !

Inside the baggage car is the shrouding for a New York Central Hudson. It was saved by a shop worker when he realized the only Hudsons with a chance of being preserved had lost this classic skin.

So, he saved the sheet metal, had it locked in a baggage car, and sent under Manhattan for hiding.

Several years later, the same man, now a forman, realized that the Central was clearly not interested in saving a Hudson. Having saved a skin, he figured he could finagle a way to save the whole locomotive. Of course, sending a Hudson dead in tow into the electrified district would attract attention, and there just wasn't any good underground storage around Albany, near the foreman's summer house, so he did the next best thing.

He parted it out over a period of six months and stored the parts in his barn at the summer home near Wilton, NY, where it remains to this day. I have heard the barn and its contents were purchased by a rail preservationist who is currently working on putting her back together. When he learned about the streamlined skin under Manhattan, he thought "man, I will never get that out quietly. Now adays, I'd need the Secret Service to get that thing out." And, well, you know the rest...

Interestingly, buff/entertainer Johnny Cash learned about the Hudson in the barn and used the tale as the basis for his Cadillac opus "One Piece At A Time."

If only Johnny had worked for the NYC, we might have a Psycho-Billy Hudson on the rails.

Rob

An interesting article at a very interesting site on the Waldorf-Astoria train platform
http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/gct61.html

robertjohndavis, we were all sworn to secrecy about those things. Shame on you for revealing them for everyone to see!!