Buried in old coverage of the Knox Mine collapse of January 1959 at Port Griffith, Pa. (where the flooding Susquehanna River caved in to a mine, flooding it and every other mine in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton anthracite region) is this photo of a Lehigh Valley hopper car wedged into an underground passage. In desperation, the emergency officials had dumped everything from hay bales to whole railroad cars into the whirlpool from the adjacent LV railroad line, and it's safe to assume they remain to this day.

More on the disaster at http://www.rootsweb.com/~paluzern/mines/knox.htm or search for "Knox Mine" online.



Knox Mine Disaster MSHA Report

lner4472@bcpl.net

Sandy-

Thats great, but I doubt you'll ever get to them. Even if you did, if that hopper looked that mangled in 1959, I can guess that it would now have a bodyy a scarp dealer could love....

TJ


Port Huron Museum
tjgaffney@phmuseum.org

I did a video interview if a miner from Port Griffith back in 1989 or so. I remeber seeing quite a few newspaper photos of the LV backing hoppers off a ramp into the Susquehanna River. Neat stuff.

Rob Davis

trains@robertjohndavis.com

> I did a video interview if a miner from Port
> Griffith back in 1989 or so. I remeber
> seeing quite a few newspaper photos of the
> LV backing hoppers off a ramp into the
> Susquehanna River. Neat stuff.

I recall seeing some photos, etc. about dumping hoppers into a river to plug a blow-out under a river at the Anthracite Mine Museum outside of Scranton.

Brian Norden

bnorden49@earthlink.net

I remember watching these hoppers being dumped into the flood torrents on black and white t.v. at the time it happened. What struck me at the time was the close resemblence to the Lionel Lehigh Valley hopper in my train set. The image of the hoppers rolling down a track and the trucks dropping off just as it freight car fell has always stayed with me.


glueck@maine.edu

Speaking of verified R.R. equipment in rivers, don't forget the Boston & Maine Pacific loco, #3666, laying at the foot of the railroad bridge in Portsmouth, N.H. The rusting boiler is a tough dive, being in strong tidal water, and I'm told she's barnacle encrusted. Still, would be a nice relic to retrieve!

glueck@maine.edu

> I recall seeing some photos, etc. about
> dumping hoppers into a river to plug a
> blow-out under a river at the Anthracite
> Mine Museum outside of Scranton.

> Brian Norden

I seem to recall that the Southern Pacific did something similar to stop the breach in the All American Canal that formed the Salton Sea.

Tom

ironbartom@aol.com

In the good old daze around Lorain, OH there was an attempt to beat mother nature and stop the shore erosion by running strings of old hoppers and gons filled with rock into Lake Erie. There were several places in the area where the water is only two feet deep 100 yards out. A good time was had by all and the formidable barriers were erected. Everything was going well until winter when about seven zillion tons of ice ground the equipment and the rocks into small pieces and buried it all out in the lake. All that was left in the spring was a coupla strings of rail out into the lake. Over in Cleveland they tried the same thing with a couple of lake freighters and the lake ate them also. Lots of spare parts someplace out there.

lamontdc@adelphia.net

More sunken R.R. equipment that has been seen
underwater:
Train wrecks in Delaware River at Delaware Water
Gap, Pa.
Box car in Senaca Lake at Salt Point, North of
Watkins Glen, N.Y.
Box car in Raquette Lake, N.Y. that fell off a car
ferry.
More than 1,000 New York City subway cars in the
Atlantic Ocean off Eastern U.S.
5 Hudson & Manhattan "K" cars in Atlantic Ocean
off Manasquan, N.J.
Kansas City/Philadelphia P.C.C. car in Dutch
Springs, Hecktown, Pa.
2 Mikado steam engines and tenders sunk in early
1942 on the "Arundo" in the Atlantic Ocean near
Sandy Hook, N.J.
2 other steam engines recently discovered in the
Atlantic Ocean off the North Jersey Coast.
Grand Trunk RR's loaded car ferry "Milwaukee",
sunk 1930 in Lake Michigan 3 miles East of
Milwaukee, Wisc.
Los Angeles Rwy. conventional trolleys sunk in the
Pacific Ocean near L.A. in 1959, but they
broke up quickly.
These are just examples of discovered stuff.
And the prize to look for:
The Morris & Essex Rwy.'s 2nd loco, the "Essex",
sunk in Lake Erie aboard the steamer "Clarion" in
1850 while being sold to the Western Ohio Railroad
in Toledo. This would be in far older condition
than anything in a museum! Hurry before the
Zebra Mussels get it.


TyburnRR@cs.com

I've been to Dutch Springs many times and never have seen the trolley. I've heard of it, but always got low on air before I could reach it. The trolley isn't the only thing that Dutch Springs has submerged. They have a firetruck, a helicopter (which is really neat I might add), two boats, a crane, a van, and a trailer from a semi. If there are any scuba divers in the Allentown region, this is a pretty good place to dive.

J.T.

> More sunken R.R. equipment that has been
> seen
> underwater:
> Train wrecks in Delaware River at Delaware
> Water
> Gap, Pa.
> Box car in Senaca Lake at Salt Point, North
> of
> Watkins Glen, N.Y.
> Box car in Raquette Lake, N.Y. that fell off
> a car
> ferry.
> More than 1,000 New York City subway cars in
> the
> Atlantic Ocean off Eastern U.S.
> 5 Hudson & Manhattan "K" cars
> in Atlantic Ocean
> off Manasquan, N.J.
> Kansas City/Philadelphia P.C.C. car in Dutch
> Springs, Hecktown, Pa.
> 2 Mikado steam engines and tenders sunk in
> early
> 1942 on the "Arundo" in the
> Atlantic Ocean near
> Sandy Hook, N.J.
> 2 other steam engines recently discovered in
> the
> Atlantic Ocean off the North Jersey Coast.
> Grand Trunk RR's loaded car ferry
> "Milwaukee",
> sunk 1930 in Lake Michigan 3 miles East of
> Milwaukee, Wisc.
> Los Angeles Rwy. conventional trolleys sunk
> in the
> Pacific Ocean near L.A. in 1959, but they
> broke up quickly.
> These are just examples of discovered stuff.
> And the prize to look for:
> The Morris & Essex Rwy.'s 2nd loco, the
> "Essex",
> sunk in Lake Erie aboard the steamer
> "Clarion" in
> 1850 while being sold to the Western Ohio
> Railroad
> in Toledo. This would be in far older
> condition
> than anything in a museum! Hurry before the
> Zebra Mussels get it.


jtjjtb@aol.com

Click the link below and scroll down for pictures and history of the Dutch Springs PCC. It was once part of the BVTA museum collection (which I was once a motorman for in another life).

Rob

Submerged PCC
rdavis@rypn.org

> More sunken R.R. equipment that has been
> seen underwater:
One I forgot (and I have been in it), the
NH/PC/CR caboose in Willow Springs, Millardsville,
Pa. They also have a real steam powered Steam
Shovel on iron rollers, not tracks, and a narrow
gage railway with switches and 3 lever switch
tower!
Cold fresh water is a good preservative of many
materials, so these sunken trains are time
capsules of long ago - but you can still see them
and climb over them without touching or falling!
"Trains" mag has had photos of sunken tunnels and
trains in Western lakes that are exposed during
exreme droughts.

TyburnRR@cs.com

Some of you may be familiar with the October 2, 1925 collapse of the C&O's Church Street tunnel in Richmond. The disaster trapped 4-4-0 #231 (Baldwin 1903) and a string of flat cars. The engineer's body was recovered, but at least two laborers are believed to be entombed in the long-sealed tunnel.

Below is a link to one of several web sites with details of the incident.

Tunnel collapse
tr2manz@frontiernet.net