Ran across this on the Rock Island Technical Society list:From "The Switch Lamp" # 268 / #7, 1978EARLY IOWA LOCOMOTIVE BURIED IN CREEKIt was on the night of December 29, 1857 that the westbound passenger train pulled out of Davenport, Ia. on the old Mississippi & Missouri tracks (now a part of Rock Island Lines). At the Duck Creek bridge west of Davenport, the locomotive rammed a heavy piece of timber on the tracks. The engine bucked, swerved, and plunged off the wooden bridge into 20 feet of mud and water.That engine is believed to be the "John Dix", a historic little wood-burner which was brought across the Mississippi River on the ice.As far as is known or has ever been ascertained, the engine still remains at the bottom of the creek, sinking ever deeper into its muddy grave.Back in 1855, before the first railroad bridge spanned the Mississippi River, the "Antoine LeClaire" was ferried across.... It was midwinter when the "John Dix" was needed in Iowa.Men and teams skidded and pulled the little locomotive from Rock Island, Ill. to Davenport across the ice. Seven more trips were made over the ice to move as many coaches and baggage cars to the Iowa side.The locomotive ran only two years before plunging off the bridge. The accident was described as sabotage on the part of an enemy of the railroad.Luckily, only the locomotive, tender and baggage car went into the water, which was termed the first railroad tragedy west of the Mississippi. The engineer and fireman perished in the wreck. The passengers were not injured.A futile effort was made to recover the locomotive by a block and tackle tied to a nearby tree. The locomotive had sunk almost out of sight. Faced with odds of no salvage equipment as it is known today, it was impossible to get the engine out of the creek. Reportedly, parts were stripped from the engine, but the boiler and cab stayed in the water.Duck Creek, in that day was a much larger tributary and considered to be a river with widths of 25 and 30 feet in the area. Today tons of dirt and silt in the winding creek conceals the historic treasure as it has during the past 101 years.This was a reprint from the November 1958 Switch Lamp - published by James C. McMeekin, Wheatland, Iowa.

Assuming the above were true and an effort were mounted to find this locomotive, how would it proceed? I know there are modern machines that use magnetism, sonar and radar to search underwater and underground, but which one would be appropriate here? Who would have this equipment? A university, perhaps, that might be willing to do it as a historical/technical experiment?Some years ago, shipwreck historian Clive Cussler mounted a search on the Colorado prairie for a UP locomotive that fell into a flooded creek, but came up empty handed. I recall that he received little help, but some derision from a few in our field, to our shame. Has equipment improved since then?

As I read the first post I too was reminded of the story/myth of the Lost Locomotive of Kiowa Creek, Colorado.I might suggest Cussler's non-fiction book entitled "The Sea Hunters" (he is a fantastic fiction author to boot). It details, along with many interesting searches for sunken ships, the search for the Lost Locomotive of Kiowa Creek, which entailed a locomotive running off the end of a washed-out trestle during a storm in the late 1800's.Many metal detectors, as well as ground-penetrating radar and a magentometer were used and nothing, aside from a few random parts of railcars ever came up. Turns out the railroad recovered the locomotive and rebuilt it (in a very secretive fashion), but then claimed it as lost to recover the insurance money. A textbook 1878 example of insurance fraud.A little more about the search is on Cussler's NUMA web site, http://www.numa.net/expeditions/locomotive.htmlFor anyone with any type of shipwreck interests, there's a lot of other fascinating reading on this website.Cheers!

Do you have any reference to additional historical documentation of this lost engine? I assume that the site can be accurately determined with the intersection of the waterway and the railroad. What does the site and its surroundings look like today? You mentioned the stripping of parts as the engine sunk. It seems probable that this stripping might have been rather half hearted under the circumstances. If the engine is near complete, it would be quite an artifact. Does your source indicate any previous or present contemplation of recovery? A magnetometer would easily locate the locomotive if it exists. Ground penetrating radar might detect it, but working through saturated soil is questionable, and the equipment is harder to procure for the search. Metal detectors are of no use for this kind of search. A locomotive buried 20-50 feet deep would create a vivid, convincing anomaly signature from a magnetometer search.I have read extensively of Clive Cussler’s search for the Kiowa Creek locomotive. There is no doubt that an engine was lost there, but subsequent research has proven that it was recovered. However, I don’t buy Cussler’s theory of the railroad secretly sneaking the engine out under cover in order to perpetrate an insurance scam. That’s too much a story teller’s world view. For some time after the wreck, the engine was completely buried in the mud with its exact location unknown. This probably made it seem forever lost at the time. Apparently fragments of this deduction persisted as legend even though the company did get the engine out some weeks later.

Please note that this was written in 1958, not recently. I just ran across it on the internet and am reposting in case anyone is interested. Sounds like the magnatometer would be the best way to go. Who would have one, especially if it could be used for free, such as a university project?Also note, there is said to be a newer Rock Island 4-4-0 in the Cimarron river near Dover, Oklahoma. This oft-told story has been more thoroughly documented. Apparently, when a new bridge was built across the river, one of the footings was poured directly over the engine, at least that's what the RR said when someone said he wanted to retrieve it in the 1960s. Also, there's that Santa Fe 2-8-2 in the Kansas River at Topeka, lost in the 1951 flood.

Here is the plan:1) Produce historical documentation of the lost locomotive without any mention of recovery.2) Research what is known about the presumption that the locomotive was never recovered.3) Determine who has ownership or jurisdiction of the site and its surroundings.4) Determine how the site could be accessed with heavy equipment.5) Obtain permission to perform a magnetometer survey.6) Narrow down the probable location to say 500 feet square.7) Assuming the site includes a waterway, perform the magnetometer work in the winter when the water is frozen.8) Rent a proton precession magnetometer. This instrument consists of a small pod mounted about 8 feet high atop a hand held mast, and cabled to a digital readout unit that you hang around your neck. Every time you press the button, the mag gives a reading of the intensity of the earth magnetic field in units called gammas. Fundamentally, this field is uniform in intensity, however, when ferrous material is introduced, the earth field induces a secondary field around the ferrous object. That secondary magnetic field adds to the basic earth field, causing the total reading to increase. The pattern of this increased magnetic field is called a magnetic anomaly.9) You might start by taking readings randomly on the site, looking for any spot where they shoot way up. You have to take into account the possible presence of tramp iron. A tie plate buried a foot deep may cause the same rise as a locomotive buried 50 feet deep. But the readings for the tie plate will rapidly fall off as you move away from it, whereas a locomotive anomaly will be much broader. 10) The general background magnetic readings may be say around 55,000 gammas. If you find a point where they rise by several hundred gammas, it would be a significant anomaly. Taking into account the broadness and the possibility of tramp iron, a conclusion can be reached as to whether it should be explored further.11) To continue, narrow down the search site further if possible. Then lay out a grid of say ten foot spacing. Take and record readings at each point on the grid. Drive stakes or use other benchmarks at the site to preserve the location of the grid. Layout the grid on paper and draw iso lines through all the points of identical readings. This produces a topographical map of the anomaly, except that the topography is magnetic intensity rather than the elevation of earth terrain. 12) The anomaly does not prove the existence of a locomotive, just the presence of ferrous material. You have to consider the size and shape of the anomaly plus other factors such as the probable weight and depth of the engine. Part of the science of mag detection is the probability of the object you are seeking. However, there is one solid conclusion that can be made: If no anomaly is present at the site, then no locomotive exists there.13) If a convincing anomaly exists in the proper probable location, then probing can be done to see if a solid object is below and at what depth. Soil type and the presence of rocks can interfere with probing, but if the site swallowed a locomotive, it is probably a type of silt or mud. Pumping water through steel tubing makes a probe that goes into soft or saturated soil with ease. If the probe strikes a solid stop, repeat the process at other locations. Record each probing and the depth of solid stop on the anomaly iso map grid. If a locomotive is being struck by probing, a lot can be determined as to its size, depth, and position. 14) If the locomotive is simply buried in mud, under shallow water, with easy access for a crane, recovery would be feasible. I suppose the cost could not possibly be under $250,000 though. Sheet piling would be driven to form a box or cofferdam around the locomotive. The water would be pumped out and the engine excavated by machine and by hand. Possibly the locomotive could be lifted out in one piece, but if not, it would need to be disassembled to some extent. Considering the presence of the tender and other rolling stock, there could be a really jumbled mess down there. The probing could help resolve this issue. One thing for sure, you would need to know where to put that cofferdam before you start building it. In fact, if it gets to the point where recovery will be attempted, ground penetrating radar should probably be tried in order to pull up more information before planning the cofferdam. Of course, there are many possible complications to this scenario that could make it a high stakes gamble, if not flatly impossible. It does not get real costly until you get to step #14, so the prior investigation needs to really nail it down. Treasure seeking can find legal problems. I would not anticipate that in this case, but if it is in public water, the government regulations could be impossible to overcome.

Contact the local state university's geology department. Request a graduate student come out with ground penetrating radar. Whatever a magnetometer locates, the GPR will accurately identify.