Had a visitor come through this week who grew up in Clinton. He reports when he was a child, the ICRR filled up the turntable pit with some steam locomotives awaiting scrap, then bulldozed the buildings and covered it up with the resulting rubble.

Not exceptionally likely, but has anybody up there checked this out?

Dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

Dave,

This is the first I have heard of it, I am sure if there were something there It would have been passed along to me by now. I would be interested to hear if anyone else out there knows anything about this one.

-=Andrew=-

RumorWeb: Lost Railroad Artifacts
abrandon@foothill.net

I doubt this, as for one, steam locomotives were worth quite a bit in scrap value, and two, most turntable pits aren't deep enough to hold one without a substantial part of it sticking above ground.

Had a visitor come through this week who
> grew up in Clinton. He reports when he was a
> child, the ICRR filled up the turntable pit
> with some steam locomotives awaiting scrap,
> then bulldozed the buildings and covered it
> up with the resulting rubble.

> Not exceptionally likely, but has anybody up
> there checked this out?

> Dave


bobyar2001@yahoo.com

Dave,

I understand there is a former turntable in Louisiana that was filled not with whole locomotives, but locomotive parts. The location is supposively now a parking lot.

The similiarity of these reports is striking, and I wonder if either is true.

-James Hefner
Hebrews 10:20a

> Had a visitor come through this week who
> grew up in Clinton. He reports when he was a
> child, the ICRR filled up the turntable pit
> with some steam locomotives awaiting scrap,
> then bulldozed the buildings and covered it
> up with the resulting rubble.

> Not exceptionally likely, but has anybody up
> there checked this out?

> Dave


Surviving World Steam Locomotives
james1@pernet.net

Have the local university survey the land with ground-penetrating radar. This is inexpensive and not too time consuming. The units are portable and one person can do it. With that much steel in the ground, any magnetic field generating metal detector should go off the scale.
I doubt that such a rumor is based in fact, but on the other hand, I am told by a friend that an old MEC boiler was used as riverbank fill in Bucksport, and is visible at low-water. An antique loco boiler (really early locomotive) is alledgedly on the edge of the Caribou Bog, in Bangor. I've never seen either, but they are reported.
There are all manner of real events when railroads just buried the remains rather than cut them up, be they boilers, scrap, or parts.
It's all worth investigating.

glueck@saturn.caps.maine.edu

I've been told that the New Haven RR Turntable pit in Pittsfield Massachusetts had a boiler dumped in it before it was filled in. My guess would be that it was the roundhouse shop boiler. GPR wouldn't work there.The site is now a scrapyard.
I wonder what really is buried in some of those old pits?

Brian



bhebert@rypn.org

"I wonder what really is buried in some of those old pits?"

In the case of the Ann Arbor Railroad roundhouse at Owosso, Michigan, absolutely nothing. As usual, it was rumored locally that steam-related hardware had been buried in the inspection pits when the roundhouse was demolished in the early 1950's. When the Steam Railroading Institute (Project 1225) arranged for the complete excavation by the Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources of the old roundhouse and turntable-pit foundations to clear the site for construction of a new roundhouse, we kept an eye on the material coming out of the pits. Except for one rusty washout plug, nothing was found but building rubble from the roundhouse. Although the turntable centerbearing foundation sat on wooden pilings that were pretty interesting.

Aarne H. Frobom, editor
The Steam Railroading Institute
P. O. Box 665
Owosso, Michigan 48867-0665

> "I wonder what really is buried in some
> of those old pits?"

I have to agree with Aarne. We had the same rumors here in Port Huron at the old P.M. Roundhouse site on 16th Street. Although the turntable and pit remained until about two years ago (the bridge was sold to a private individual who moved it to Mayville, Michigan and the pit was recently filled in) rumors persisted that steam era tools and parts were dumped in the former inspection pits on site.

With the imminent re-use of the site for other purposes, two small test digs were conducted with the help of a former steam/ diesel mechanic who worked had there. Although they were sursory at best, these digs revealed nothing more than chunks of concrete from the building itself and the head of what was a severly corroded spike maul. The site is now inaccessible, as it is now being rented out to contractors working on our local sewer-separation projects. Similar rumors exist about the former inspection pits of the Grand Trunk Western roundhouse site here, but to my knowledge no one has ever looked into these rumors (the GTW turntable is still on site).

peremarquette@hotmail.com

Fascinating as this might be, it sounds much like other "Lost Locomotive" tales - sort of an Urban Legend genere all its own. I'm sure all the stories have some basis in fact, for example, some old parts may have been buried there. But the railroads were always savvy about the value of scrap metal - they would not easily part with an entire locomotive.

tmanz@afo.net

When when the National Park Service was rehabilitating the roundhouse in Scranton, an extensive excavation was performed. While no locomotive parts of any note were discovered, crews did find a relatively complete wheel/axle jack from the turn of the century, complete a an 18 inch gauge dolly. It was cleaned up and put back in the tiny rails on which it was discovered and sits there to this day. Odds are the railroads didn't throw much into these old pits, but likewise didn't take the time to remove what was already in them either.

Dave Crosby

bing@epix.net