That's not the first time I've heard of brand-new cars (with little or no visible damage) being condemned and crushed on the spot after a train wreck. It seems a waste, but no manufacturer or dealer would want to deal with the potential liability of selling such a car.

While not as dramatic as some of the other egends, there is an overturned and abandoned 70-ton steel hopper lying on it side along the Buffalo Creek & Gauley between Dundon and Cressmont, between the tracks and the river. It's from the later 80's era, not the 60's, and it is minus trucks, but it's very much still there and I have photos.

If you get curious, bring lots of tick spray and good running shoes so you can outrun the snakes - Northern Black Racers are in the cuts!

I'll feed you one related to me by a former museum administrator the other day. The names have been changed to protect the "guilty."

The museum in question retains a few cars with, for a variety of reasons, private reporting marks--say, "IRMX" for Illinois Railway Museum (again, names changed in this retelling).

One day, the nearby railroad which switches into the museum called him up and said, "Hey, we got four cars here in the yard for you. When do you want them?"
Huh? "Ummm, ..... we didn't know of anything coming our way, but....."
"Well, they got your reporting marks on 'em."
"Maybe some freight cars from that Class One that was going to donate them to us?"
"Naw, passenger cars."
????????????????
"Look, just sit tight, and wait until I get down there, OK?"

He went down and discovered four brand new commuter cars in pristine paint. And sure enough, the cars, destined for a commuter agency, had reporting marks on them for "IRMX", stuck on there by the builder, International Railway Manufacturing.

"So... do we take them and hold them hostage for other cars, or do we call them up and set them straight about using our registered reporting marks?"

The latter approach prevailed. Now, what this said about the ability (or lack thereof) of the shipping railroad(s) to properly track shipments, I'll leave to the readers' imaginations.

In times of low scrap prices and in remote areas, it makes sense to bury the damaged cargo. Even "Trains" Magazine has reported damaged automobiles from train wrecks being treated this way.
"Railroad" Magazine had the legend of a wrecked box car load of silver ore being used as track ballast because all the wreck crew had done was reload the treasure into a handy Maintenance of Way drop bottom car.
An early Orange Empire Railway Museum baggage car was shipped to the West in passenger trains with the museum's initials added to the sides. When it reached Los Angeles Union Station, the original letter board name was read, it was treated as any other interline passenger equipped car, and loaded with baggage in a train towards its former owner. It took a while for someone to realize that OERM was not the reporting marks of any railroad, and not in the proper format for a privately owned car.

Don't know if this is true or not, but supposedly the two surviving "modern" B&O locomotives in the museum at Baltimore--P-7 "President Washington" 4-6-2 No. 5300, and pioneering USRA Q-3 2-8-2 No. 4500--survived by being hidden under boxcar parts and other things to keep them from being cut up by what was at the time a money-hungry, anti-steam management; I've heard that documents were even forged to list the engines as being scrapped, and that the locomotives did not come out of hiding until the management changed.

Not a legend, but apparently true, is the story of a train that derailed in that moonscape that is the territory of the San Diego & Arizona Eastern. Some of the cars rolled down a mountainside, and were just left there. One of them was loaded with canned beer. That beer is now gone, hikers having found this refreshment in the desert over the years--if it is still refreshing.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/slworking/6193982851/

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/r ... ?1,1356735

Personally, my favorite rumor I've heard so far is that the PRR buried a J, number 6435, which was supposedly never recorded as being sold for scrap or cut up by the PRR itself, under the Pitcairn Yard's duck under as fill in the late 50s/early 60s.

Quite a few people swear that PRR 6435 was never scrapped, and the old duckunder was never touched when they rebuilt Pitcairn yard in the 90s as an intermodal terminal. This rumor may hold some truth to it, but unless someone can get permission to dig up the area around that duckunder, the rumor remains.

Ill be checking my books for the approximate location of the duckunder. Better to try to find awnsers to some of these rumors, rather than let them remain after all, getting permission to go in and search, however, is a completely different story. I say to let some rumors be solved, after all.

Seeing a brand new Pennsy T1 would be something, but finding a PRR J1 class 2-10-4, now THAT would be interesting!

Les

Magnetometer and ground penetrating radar. Call in the local college geology department. Easy-peasy.

Supposedly, three J1's were left in Altoona in 1960, one being designated for the Northumberland collection. After trying to move it three times, and three derailments, it was cut up as a bother. Who knows?

On the other hand, I had a foamer swear on his life, there is a "secret warehouse in New Jersey", filled with GG1's! I'll bet this is the same one containing the T1's and a NYC J2 Hudson!

Then there's a B8a PRR tank switcher in a quarry, the progenitor of that story having emailed it to me himself. He stood on the cab roof himself! You know who!

You thinking of this warehouse? ;-)

Some locomotives are forgotten than found, A PRR B-6sb was found lying in the weeds, forgotten around Pittsburgh back in the 80s, who's to say the PRR didn't forgot another one?

GPR isn't very reliable. I knew someone who went looking for a buried WW2 tank last year in Europe with one of these sets, and couldn't get conclusive readings even over things he knew for sure were buried (he tested it on a underground gas tank at the local gas station, and things like that, and it didn't pick up most of it).I got into an argument with a foamer once who swore the UP had two articulateds also housed in a warehouse somewhere. the photo he had was of 3985 and 4023 sitting in the roundhouse in Cheyenne before they were both pulled out. I showed him where each engine was accounted for and that 3985 had pulled fan trips for years. In true foamer fashion, he said I was wrong, and that UP must have re-numbered them because he knew for sure they were still there. Oddly, he couldn't say he recalled where this building was in spite of the fact he claimed to have taken the photo...

I don't know much about Magnometers and GPR, but would there be anything else short of digging the site up first, that would prove something the size of a J1 would be buried?


Even if it just the locomotive itself sans tender, there is the old coast-to-coast storage tender from Hagerstown that the WNYRHS is in possession of. I'm fairly certain that the body itself, wouldn't be in too bad of shape, even after 50+ years of sitting underground. I will try to pinpoint the location of the flyover/duckunder later today, and then post the location I believe it would be at within the yard complex.

If GPR and a magnetometer doesn't pick it up, it's because there ain't none. Especially a magnetometer.
This is too large to be missed by somebody who knows his/her onions.

Yes, you found that warehouse! Do I see Elvis and Bigfoot peeking around the last chassis in that shot?

Rumors are like conspiracy theories. The promponents of the sunken/buried/lost/secretly hidden locomotives have set themselves up with the premise that absense of evidence of existence is evidence of existence. No matter how much research, poking or prodding you do will convince them. People will swear that they saw it, but when you push harder, information is second, third and forth hand.

I'm not saying to go on a scavenger hunt across the country for a J1, I am simply stating that it might be worthwhile to attempt a search of a certain area. If the Magnetometer and GPR turn nothing big up, its not there.

I agree lack of evidence doesn't equate to evidence of existence, and the rumors of the locomotive never being scrapped may just be rumors made by those in refusal to believe that the PRR scrapped every J1, or that maybe its a case of misplaced/misread paperwork leading people to believe such. As stated above, it would be a sweep of the general area of Pitcarin yard for any large buried object.