The not going to end well thread got me curious on who Bob Diamond was, which led me to the following;

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bro ... -1.1227820

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/21 ... -newyork21

http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/528092 ... nue-subway

http://gothamist.com/2012/12/27/sealed_ ... nnel_a.php

It is quite a neat story the only thing I don't understand is it sounds like for a while Diamond was given the permission to dig under there back in the early 1980's why didn't they just break through the wall and see if they could find the steam locomotive back then?

Because it is a figment of someone's over-active imagination, much like a certain "armoured rail car" near Grand Central Terminal. Different person, same goofy idea.

Howard P.
Get Real, NY

Is the baggage car in this article not the car in question?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ecret.html

That's the car in question.

What it is most decidedly NOT is "the car that hauled FDR/his limo secretly to a secret elevator in GCT" or whatever the media whore of the minute is promoting. It's been discussed here repeatedly; do a search of this forum.

This balderdash comes about repeatedly--not just in the case of this car or steam locomotive, but in everything from the Loch Ness Monster to the Bermuda Triangle to UFOs laying out "landing strips" in the desert--because we can't, in realistic terms, "prove a negative." I can make a case that the moon is made of cheese, claim that the astronauts landed in the wrong areas and didn't dig deep enough, and since I can't prove I'm wrong, I pile a burden of proof upon you to show me there's no cheese.... after all I can say, why haven't we gone back if there's no cheese?.....

I know nothing whatsoever about the claims of a steam locomotive in that tunnel. I can only say "consider the source"--and those I know personally who have dealt with him have called him a "nutcase" and claimed they were being "polite" with that terminology. Make of that what little you can.

Alexander, I was just asking what car he was talking about I wasn't trying to give the person claiming there was an 1832 steam locomotive under the streets any credit. I am sorry for going off topic if it upset you.

I remember seeing this on the History Channel on some program about things hidden under cities. With absolutely no previous knowledge of the car I thought to myself "Really? It looks like a standard former NYC baggage car to me. And isn't it painted just like the Grand Central wreck train? Why is someone from Metro North flat lying to all of America?". I also got a chuckle over the comment that every piece of equipment with a reporting mark ending in X belonging to the Federal Government. That's a lot of government owned cars! Normally I love when a train story makes mainstream TV, but this pile of manure was a new low.

>after all I can say, why haven't we gone back if there's no cheese?

I blame Proxmire. An obvious tool of the Wisconsin cheese lobby. As it was, they had to give away cheese at one point; why subsidize building a trillion-dollar infrastructure to import foreign fromage vert?

Das macht kein Sinn!

I thought that the "baggage" car in question was deduced to have been the tool car for the double ended crane that is now at the Danbury Railway Museum.

Charlie, that's precisely what it is. But that's too dull a story for Mr. Brucker. And the mainstream media does not know better, and does not have the basic journalistic skills to research/verify Brucker's balderdash.

"When the legend becomes the truth, print the legend." from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance".

Howard P.

Back to the original discussion, this Diamond guy hears a rumor of a tunnel long since thought to be buried history. No one knows where it is but he spends countless hours digging through all sorts of archives, figures out where the thing is how to get into it. Still people tell him he is crazy but he goes down there and proves it exists. Sounds like he is rather credible on the subject so far.

Now he claims that in the process of burying the thing they also left a steam locomotive down there during the construction phase. Goes out there and gets a reputable service with experience surveying NYC area http://brinkenv.com/ to show that there is something about 20ft long and magnetic that meets the description of the steam locomotive he has for years claimed to be there Howard why are you so quick to write this one off? Is there more to the story that hasn't been published?

The other neat thing about this one for railroad preservation is he has already lined up the funding to go find the thing (Via national geographic). It sounds like all they need to do is tear down the wall. At this point the whole challenge seems to be little more than bureaucratic. On the other hand having seen the crap my father-in-law just went through to tear down a 2ft long non load bearing wall in his own damn apartment (cost about $10K after he finished paying everyone off) dealing with the stupid city of NY I feel nothing but pity for the guy as it seems like he has chosen the worst place on earth to get anything practical done!

ooo just do it and find out, like digging in a chicago Mobster's vault and finding nothing, but then... he would not have left anything...would he....

Its much easier to chase these phantoms than to work with reality. Rather than working to save what is known to exist and is in danger of being lost, many people would rather chase these dreams because no real effort or expense is involved. Once things are found and permissions are granted, things tend to stall because reality hits.

Just look at the 2-2-2s sitting off the coast of NJ as an example. Similar era and real - now what...

I think that the energy spent dreaming vs. doing is Mr. Mitchell's point.

By the way, the argument against the engine being there is simple: the rails in the tunnel were removed. If they were able to remove the rails, they were able to remove the engine. Now the question is: would there be a reason to intentionally leave the engine? Was it worth less in scrap than the effort to scrap it? This seems unlikely. A bootleg still or random junk from later periods is much more likely, assuming anything is actually there.


Regards,

Art S.

Maybe, maybe not. The reason the Chicago Tunnel Co. locomotive preserved at IRM still exists is simply because the elevator broke. The locomotive had been left at the Field Museum spur, apparently so the museum personal could switch their own ash cars. This spur was just below ground level, east of the IC tracks, with no track access from the outside; the only way out was down the elevator to the main tunnel level that passed under the ICRR. The elevator broke, ending ash service to the Field Museum, but when the whole system shut down, no effort was made to reclaim the loco and four or five cars.

The Field Museum eventually re-purposed the tunnel for a pipe connection (water main, IIRC) and the contractor doing the work derailed the cars and jacked them tight against one wall of the tunnel, but that was the extent of their movement for decades. Even after IRM secured donation, there was no practical way to remove the equipment, until the city decided to revamp Lake Shore Drive... the new routing was going to require the elevator shaft be filled. IRM approached the excavating contractor who donated machine and operator time to remove the cap on the shaft and crane the equipment to the surface. Otherwise, it would still be down there today, even less accessible than before.

Read the story here:

http://www.irm.org/railwire/rw162a1.html

I am not surprised at all .

Mr. Starr

Dennis,

In that case scrapping the train was not cost effective because, either whole or cut up, it had to be lifted out of a hole. Thus it was abandoned.

The museum was able to acquire it because the contractor was able to get a tax deduction while doing a good deed - otherwise, as you pointed out, it would still be down in the hole.

In the case being discussed in this thread, they were able to salvage the rails so I don't see how there was limited or costly access. Unless the engine was left for posterity, they left it behind in some sort of insurance fraud scheme, or there was a reason to treat it as trash rather than scrap, leaving the engine makes no sense. These people weren't stupid; if there was no reason to leave it behind, it wasn't.

Regards,

Art S.