Alex, always a pleasure to have this kind of good fun on here with everyone! ;-)

A high-altitude nuclear detonation produces an immediate flux of gamma rays from the nuclear reactions within the device. These photons in turn produce high energy free electrons by Compton scattering at altitudes between (roughly) 20 and 40 km. These electrons are then trapped in the Earth's magnetic field, giving rise to an oscillating electric current. This current is asymmetric in general and gives rise to a rapidly rising radiated electromagnetic field called an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Because the electrons are trapped essentially simultaneously, a very large electromagnetic source radiates coherently.
The pulse can easily span continent-sized areas, and this radiation can affect systems on land, sea, and air. The first recorded EMP incident accompanied a high-altitude nuclear test over the South Pacific and resulted in power system failures as far away as Hawaii. A large device detonated at 400–500 km (250 to 312 miles) over Kansas would affect all of the continental U.S. The signal from such an event extends to the visual horizon as seen from the burst point.

And this link:http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=56112

I've just seen the reference to the alleged british "strategic reserve". This story has been kicked around various UK magazines and websites for over twenty five years, and so far no-one has come up with any verifiable details.

It is true that the British government developed a taste for hiding important assets underground from around 1938 onwards. It is also true that "secret" control trains were prepared, using old coaches from the pre-nationalisation companies; these were fitted out as mobile regional government centres and hidden around the railway system for use in emergency. Secrecy went as far as inserting fake scrapping information in the disposal records. Nevetheless the locations of the trains were fairly well known, and a large proportion of the coaches ended up preserved when the trains were disbanded.

I just do not believe that anyone could work on such locomotives without discovering their identities, as every component part would have the loco number stamped on it.

As soon as anyone produced a number, all the spotters would be thumbing their old records to check which scrapyard the engine was last seen in. Very detailed records are available, just one example: the Industrial Railway Society produces a guide every 2-3 years listing every privately owned loco in Britain, including military locos, with the map references for the depots where they are kept. Back in 1984 I led a consortium to buy Bagnall No. 2746, an ex army loco of 1944 which ended up at a colliery. Within weeks I got a full service history of the locomotive from the IRS, which army bases it had worked at, when it moved, which company repaired it. They seem to have more spies than the CIA and KGB combined.

The "secret" steam shunter on the website, looks remarkably like Robert Stephensons & Hawthorns works No.7151, which is based at the Avon Valley Railway, the nearest preserved railway to Bath. According to their website, it ran without a number on trial after overhaul in 2007. The MOD never owned any engines of this design.

Sorry to pour cold water on an entertaining story, but the "strategic reserve" is a spoof.

Tim

IIRC, that test was intended to test the effects of a stratospheric nuclear airburst on the ionosphere and radio communications; needless to say, the results weren't quite what everyone expected!

It's been suggested that a large number of the former Soviet Union's ICBM warheads were actually set to detonate at high altitudes to disrupt or destroy power grids and communications systems throughout the U.S. and Canada using EMP; this wouldn't have affected key military facilities and units with EMP-resistant communications and backup power supplies, but it certainly would've shut down factories and transportation networks.

Getting back to the original subject... this is just more of the same stuff we've been hearing for years. It doesn't help that we now have a generation or two of folks who are computer and Internet savvy but totally clueless about everything else; that makes spreading such ludicrous rumors (or outright lies) far too easy. Couple that with the seeming inability of many of those same folks to verify or dispute those rumors using the same technology as well as other sources of information (apparently concepts like "research" and "critical thinking" are as foreign to them as just about everyone else these days) and it's no wonder why this stuff has a life of its own, even though there's plenty of evidence to debunk all of it. Then again, our ever-so accurate "news" media, with its tendency to confuse even the most obvious of facts (research and critical thinking, not to mention common sense, are just as foreign to those folks, unfortunately) hasn't helped the situation, either.

I think your post hit the nail on the head. I recall a few years back, when PBS aired a 60th Anniversary special on the liberation of Auschwitz, some authorities were saying how sad it was that books declaring it a fraud were now shelved next to the truth, and were being given some aspect of credibility. Granted, Auschwitz and the Holocaust are far more serious issues than stored steam locomotives, but the argument is similar.
Denial is not a river in Egypt.

I'm watching a FEMA train roll by my office building here in downtown St. Louis now..... I wonder why the cars have RR logos on them........

Seriously, you should just Google "FEMA train" for interesting, if not accurate, information. One has to be pretty far down the rabbit hole to believe some of this stuff. The problem is that the people who believe such conspiracies, often subscribe to the argument that the absence of evidence of the conspiracy is evidence of the conspriacy itself. The twisted logic that often relies on third, fourth, or even fifth hand reports of these alleged "FEMA trains" being built by Trinity and others is astounding. Simply put, these people don't live in our world....

These are the same people that think the tabloids at the supermarket check out are real news! Sad.

Later!
Mr. Ed

Please refer to the following URL for factual information regarding nuclear EMP. It is very well written and exquisitely footnoted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Non-nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse

You should note that the detonation of a single 10 Megaton-yield thermonuclear weapon over the center of the United States would likely destroy ALL non-hardened computer systems (99.9% of all computers) within the continental United States. This means that virtually any locomotive that has microprocessors would be "bricked" for a very long time.

Also every automobile that relies upon computers for management of the engine (a very large number) would cease to function. This is from a single weapon.

Sharpen up you boiler maker skills perhaps?

Yes, that is correct. FEMA has been funding massive development of EMP-impervious railway equipment.

Seashore Trolley Museum recently completed restoration of ASL-100. The cover story is that it was funded by ICE-T or Vanilla Ice or one of those rappers... but follow the money. It was actually funded by FEMA, and was carefully reconstructed to be impervious to EMP. What's more, secured inside Seashore's shop is a secret EMP test facility called "The Box". Don't take my word for it, go up there and check out "The Box" for yourself.

FEMA has been funding the reconstruction of hundreds of other pieces of equipment. This year, in response to the North Korean threat, a number of locomotives were shipped to Michigan to retrofit the same technology FEMA developed for 1225.

In California, near Lawrence Livermore Lab, they just completed SP 2472 as well. FEMA started it to assure that some transportation infrastructure survived Y2K, but it wasn't finished in time. Livermore wants big into this, but there's little chance they'll overtake Fermilab and their sprawling operation near Union, Illinois.

Another up-and-coming center is near Washington, DC. After 9/11, the facility was completely rebuilt, with most of the works totally underground. The cover story for the rebuilding was a highway bypass.

As for the people-hauling cars, yes, FEMA is responsible for them; no, the chains are not for prisoners, but for strapping down fixtures and furnishings. (found that one out the hard way!) These fixtures and furnishings have been pre-positioned around the country in large warehouses. Real strange operation, everything has Swedish code names. At one point, a contractor was caught selling to the general public "out the back door" to meet his budget, and IKEA (the division of FEMA which runs the warehouses) decided this was a pretty good idea.

That explains what happened to the Ted Williams Tunnel in Boston! Personally, I'm keeping my eyes FEMA's rebuilding of the E6s, #460. Cosmetic restoration, indeed!

Ok here is my fun input.

I think Strasburg and Cass are being funded by a secret black ops from the government to keep up their steamers! Why? Don't they have the most operational steamers in the country? Think about where they are, Strasburg is near the coal mines of PA and Cass is near the coal mines of West Virginia........Hmmmmmmmm..........Going to need coal to get the rest of the steamers fuel to get the country back on it's feet. Ok that's my fun input. :)

Actually, this would make a much better excuse for Steamtown NHS, wouldn't you think? Except that after the 1959 Knox Mine flooding disaster, what little coal has been coming out of Pa. these days has been from the Clearfield Cluster and southwestern Pa. near Brownsville............

While the English version is apparently a spoof, some folks may not realize that Sweden actually did have a Strategic Reserve of steam locomotives until the 1990's. (I'm guessing that's where the idea for this came from)

http://news.gaurc.us/?p=761

At least one was imported to the US and ran on the Belfast and Moosehead Lake operation in Maine for a few years.

I'm quite surprised that no one has mentioned that hobby manufacturer Wm. K. Walthers nearly gave away the whole deal about the "FEMA train" when the briefly marketed their "Jailbox" boxcar model years ago. As I understand it, those responsible for this security breach left work one afternoon, and never returned.

On a more serious note, while as far as I know the US never had a strategic reserve of steam locomotives, the DOD did have a strategic reserve of passenger cars; older Pullman cars on lease from Pullman and stored at various army bases against the day that a large mobilization would be needed again. According to Pullman Co. materials in the collection of the Newberry Library in Chicago, the program began in 1949, and continued to the early sixties, when the DOD apparently decided that future mobilizations would involve moving troops by air.

More discussion at the PassengerCarList:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PassengerCarList/

About 10 years ago, there was a story that the Russian Army had copied the Swedish model of a strategic reserve of non computer steam locomotives, for use after Y2K hit. At least, that was the explanation of how international charter operators were able to hire steam locomotives from the Russian Army to pull their special Trans Siberian excursions.

As I stated before:



In the case of the former Soviet Union; steam was not entirely retired until the late 1980s or early 1990s. So steam was kept in reserve in the event of diesel failures or other problems. Fairly recently stored, they were relatively easy to return back into service.

The Soviets also kept large reserves of captured German "Kriegsloks" 2-10-0s still that were still* 4' 8 1/2" guage in Belarus and along their border with the Warsaw Pact. These were kept in the event of an uprising in the Warsaw Pact or a NATO invasion; in order to be able to move troop trains quickly across the standard gauge Warsaw Pact system (the Soviet Union itself was 5' 0" guage.)

*Others were reguaged to 5' 0" inches for use on Soviet Railways.