i assume this locomotive is either part of a war memorial or a piece of industrial sculpture. Anyone know details? I came by this pic via an unrelated search in google images, no information associated with it was to be found.


Cheers, Jason

Someone answered off line....

http://www.daylife.com/photo/0b475XV2fXbHn

http://www.daylife.com/photo/09b52d1cW6gHm

Sorta looks like something my three Grand Daughters are finished playing with.

My dad was an electrician on an air craft carrier in the Korean conflict. He said as an electrician he could enter a lot of places on the ship otherwise off limits while changing light bulbs. He said he got to take a look at new warfare technology that being guided missiles that were carried by aircraft and sent into rr tunnels where trains would be hid from aerial bomb attack. I don't imagine those locomotives looked at good as this one in the aftermath. Sad to think of the death toll on all sides from such events.

Oh yeah! That's that ex-Erie locomotive....

I visited Imjingak in May 2009, shortly before this locomotive was removed from an enclosed temporary building and put on display. (The location, by the way, is easily reached by new commuter service running north from the Seoul main station.) As for the Erie locomotive, I provided the curator of the Korean Railroad Museum in Uiwang a picture of it and asked him if it was preserved somewhere. He replied that it is not known to exist anywhere. Like most other old Korean railroad equipment, it likely met its fate at the hands of scrappers many years ago.

There are, by the way, two steam locomotives in display at Imjingak. One is the destroyed locomotive already pictured, and the other is this one, which has been there for decades:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/orig ... 437553.jpg

I first saw it in late 1987 when it was on the display on the old right-of-way that had once connected North and South. When I returned many years later, it had been moved some yards east of the old r-o-w, which was relaid when the rail connection was restored. A couple of old passenger cars behind the locomotive, looking very beat-up, house a restaurant. On the left side of the photo you can partially see an amusement park that has been constructed there as well.

Here are articles from 2003 and 2006 about the destroyed locomotive:

http://www.stripes.com/news/korean-war- ... ed-1.57121

http://www.stripes.com/news/rusting-in- ... war-1.4596