Lima S/N 1931

http://www.shaylocomotives.com/surviving/1913surv.jpg

Mike Stillwell
Buena Vista, VA

It's location is East Bay on beach, Beaver Cove, BC. Another Shay, #2345/1910; fell off the barge in the middle of Beaver Cove; both were in the process of being hauled out for scrap; and left where they fell. Since #1913 is still there; I would assume #2345 is also still there; but no proof.

EDIT: here is the list for Canada. I already mentioned the Sherkston quarry engines.

http://209.240.73.40/lists/search.php?s ... ountry=CAN

Here is the RYPN brief on the engines in the Kaw River:

http://www.rypn.org/RyPN/briefs/viewbri ... 200907.txt

... and this one makes mention of the sunk Rock Island engines; but no evidence for same:

http://www.rypn.org/RyPN/briefs/viewbri ... 152219.txt

When I became a S.C.U.B.A. diver, I remembered many of these stories, and was told some more.
Brooklyn Rapid Transit has been reputed to have dumped their old trolleys in the Canarsie, N.Y. Sand Pit. When I asked New York trolley fans for the address, they told me the number of the Public School now built on the site. I'm afraid that it does not have old trolley cars IN its basement.

Jim;

Besides the two c.1850 locomotives; two locomotives also went down with the Arundo during WWII. The website below has a picture of the ship with the locomotives lashed on deck; and a picture of one of the driving wheels. The wreck was wire dragged, so the locomotives are in poor shape to say the least.

http://njscuba.net/sites/site_mud_hole.html#Arundo

There is also supposively "a steam engine" in the "CNJ ROW marl pit" south of Farmingdale, NJ. I have looked around with Google Earth, and cannot see anything that looks like a gravel pit. Also, I said a "steam engine" because some reports say it is a traction engine rather than a steam locomotive. Not very promising.

Closer to home, Green Bros. Gravel Co. had a sand and gravel pit in Enon, LA. Looks like this is it:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 9&t=h&z=15

The story goes that three engines were sitting at the end of the pit, awaiting either repair or scrap. The three engines were:

* Ex. GM&O 0-6-0 #60
* Ex. IC 0-6-0 #210?
* Ex. MC 2-8-2 #124

A train switching gravel cars accidently bumps into them; pushing all three into the gravel pit. They have been lying there ever since.

The evidence:

* Couldn't find anything on GM&O 0-6-0 #60; Don Ross photographed a derelict looking 0-6-0 #66 at Greenville Bros.

* According to Don Ross' website at:

http://donsdepot.donrossgroup.net/dr872.htm

210 was built by Alco-Brooks in November 1912, #52259, as Illinois Central 210. It was sold to GBS&G as 210 in November 1954. Here is a picture of it:



* The document:

http://www.msrailroads.com/Miss%20Central.rtf

lists MC 2-8-2 #124 as going to Green Brothers Gravel Co. in Franklinton in 6/1953 and scrapped in 9/1965. Here is a picture of it with the MC:



Three engines from Greenville Bros. were later preserved:

* GM&O 4-6-0 #72 preserved in nearby Franklinton, LA
* T&NO 0-6-0 #842 at the Casey Jones Museum in MS
* MSC 2-8-2 #141 along SR 28 in Georgetown, MS.

I find it interesting that the location is always given relative to Farmingdale, NJ, with no mention of the larger Lakewood, NJ to the south on the CNJ. Does "south of Farmindale" rule out anything south of Lakewood? I've looked at maps and visited the ROW and I have not found any place that could be a "marl" pit between Lakewood and Farmingdale.

Here is a 1901 topo map with no obvious candidates for a marl pit:
http://historical.mytopo.com/getImage.asp?fname=asbu01nw.jpg&state=NJ
Farmingdale is in the center with Lakewood in the southwest corner.

The soils change from clay to sand in this area. Anything much further south would be a sand or gravel pit rather than a marl pit. There is a large sand mining operation a few miles further south on the CNJ at Woodmansie.

I live nearby and if anyone had more info, I could check it out. It would be worth spending a Saturday afternoon, but I would not expect to actually find anything.

-Mark

On the Arundo, aren't those the tenders aft of the fore mast? No one has claimed to have found the locomotive bells. Possibly these were built for England, which doesn't use them. But, I wonder if the "jewelry" was packed in crates in the coal bunkers? The cabs are rusted away. Safe diving, and show us what you find. I will be at BTS, Harmon Cove - Secaucus, N.J. this weekend, at the New Jersey Council of Diving Clubs booth.

Well, so they are; the locomotives themselves are ahead of the aft mast.

I can only guess these are MacArthur 2-8-2s; and no, AFAIK, they were not fitted with bells.

-James

The manifest for the Arundo has been published, and it says the locomotives are 2 Mikados.

I recall coverage in old L&RP magazine about the Kaw River locomotives and the Rock Island locomotive in the Cimarron River. I believe it was the Rock Island locomotive that somebody once began to recover, but was stopped by the railroad company who had concerns about damage to their bridge footings. The Rock Island locomotive was a relatively large and modern 4-4-0, and there was a fairly good photograph in L&RP of either the exact locomotive that went into the river, or one in the same class as that one.


Here is a newspaper article about the Rock Island wreck at Cimarron River:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-fr ... 946797D6CF

I grew up in Farmingdale, NJ listening to stories told by my brother (and father before him) of the train below the surface in the old “Marl Hole.” (No native of Farmingdale ever called it the Marl Pit.) Both claimed to have gone swimming around the wreck and have looked into a hole in its boiler. As a kid I went with my age group on walks down the old railroad track and gazed at the remains of the stack of the engine. We sometimes could see the outline of the engine itself when conditions were right. My brother, now dead, later became a Conrail and Amtrak engineer. He told stories of the Marl Hole treasures until the end. I have no idea what sort of engine these remains might have been or how they ended up where they did. I simply know the legend was very much alive when I was growing up in the 1940s and 50s.

Go into Google Maps and pull up a satellite image of Farmingdale, NJ. Find Main Street and Asbury Avenue (AKA county rd. 547). Scroll up Asbury Avenue toward the NE until you get to St. Catherine of Siena Church (right side of road). Just off to the SE of the church grounds, between those grounds and the old railroad tracks (Jersey Central, I guess they were), is the Marl Hole. It was always a yucky green color in the "old days" and judging from the satellite image, that hasn't changed.

Paul Murphy

I'm certain you'll find people who will swear on a stack of bibles that they've seen the engine and car underwater anyway.
I won't go into where (I won't be responsbile for starting a new "lost anything" legend), but there was a long standing rumor of a complete railroad shop and all the tracks still standing, abandoned in a place I used to live in. Locals said a logging company went belly up at the end of WW2 and locked the shops and walked away and it was all there. Problem was, people couldn't agree on exactly where it was, and nobody could tell you where they'd "seen it" (always, they could never remember when it was either). I found the info on where said shops were, found the company that owned the property, got permisison and went in to look. I found the site, the tracks had to have been ripped of decades before due to the size of the trees on the roadbed. The ties had completely rotted away, no rails or spikes could be found. It'd been stripped clean. I found the shop site, the only thing left was a collapsing inspection pit wall and nothing else.
Even still and with maps and photos, the locals WOULDN'T believe it. So many of them said, "I saw the place not that long ago and everything was still there, you could have run trains through there with no problems." Naturally, none of them could point it out on a map or even tell you the general region when challenged.

Sounds like my adventures looking for Lombard log hauler remains. Everyone has a story but can't remember when or where!

On the humorus side: One time my friend Don heard of the remains of one of these beasts from a credible source. He drove over 300 miles to retreive it only to find out that he already HAD the remains!

On another note:

I think we under estimate the ability and drive of the railroads companies ect. to retreive
an expensive piece of equipment like a locomotive that has tumbled into a lake, river etc.

To add to this the local news rags of the day would have described in vivid gory detail the accident but like todays fishwrap news media, never bothered to reported the next chapter (i.e. recovery effort) thus leaving the impression that the locomotive was still there.

Nevertheless these stories are so addictive!


Best regards,

Terry Harper

P-51, shouldn't your legend be called Quincy & Torch Lake RR? They stopped running about 1945.