http://www.camgenpa.com/photos/oldmisc.html
This site has another view. It mentions four engines. The one in the foreground appears to be an L1, among the better freight engines on the PRR at the time.



http://www.camgenpa.com/jo/1936FloodGibbons.html
This site has a personal account from someone working in the "Conemaugh Roundhouse" (same one as the photo or perhaps a different one?) - refers to the water coming up very fast, but makes no mention of placing engines along the river for rip-rap.

I rather doubt that the PRR would have deliberately put one, or more, of its better engines in harm's way. I theorize that those engines had been parked on that siding previously, and were caught by the rising water.

JR

Based on 1) the account written by Raymond M. Gibbons; 2) the presence of ties and track in the photo below; and 3) the fact that the locomotives involved appear to be new, modern locomotives contemporary to 1936........

... I am revising my assessment. Track washed out, locos fell down in cramped quarters. Locos recovered for further service.

Got a problem with that? <;-)

If you look closely in the far left of the enlarged photo it appears there is temporary wooden cribbing supporting the roundhouse wall. Looks like the soil under that part of the building was washed away.

I speculate that these engines were stored on a track between the roundhouse wall and the river. A quick rising flood undercut the tracks and they toppled over. Note there is no coal spilled from the tenders, they where probably mostly empty which would make them lighter than the engines. The undercutting action would probably make the heavier locomotives sink faster, they appear to be lower down into the river bank.

Lots of other flood related trash on the river bank. Looks like a flood caused derailment to me.

Not sure about the apparent steam from the last loco ? Maybe they were trying to get the boiler pressure up in that one to push the string away from the flood waters and were too late ?

Just a guess.

Cheers, Kevin

You can see a bunch of people out there working, the flooding is down, perhaps to help restore the trackage, perhaps to get a crane in there to right the equipment. With the possibility of a roundhouse and a bunch of engines around storing some on a side track makes sense and the flooding undercutting the track causing them to fall in leaning towards the river. Nobody could push these engines in with the flooding in the way. It would be dangerous, and 3 months after you would be in recovery mode to rescue the engines.
Putting a crane nearby to push them in, the roadbed would be far too risky to allow safely doing that. You need some time to dry out and water tables to recede. The smoke? perhaps some work being done on one of the engines or pressure water or steam to work something.

Yes, I missed the bit about the photo being taken 3 months after the flood. My theory about the last engine being steamed up is obviously incorrect.

Maybe they are using steam from the roundhouse boilers to clean mud off that engine to better assess the damage ? Floods cover everything with thick layers of mud.

Cheers, Kevin.

Both of the links to Cam(bria)Gen(eology)P(ensylvani)a are contributed by the same person, John Gibbons, and written or photographed by the same person, Raymond Gibbons.

It's puzzling to me that the second locomotive from the front seems to have part of the top of the Belpaire firebox removed.

Not according to the University of Pittsburgh Library, which says the first image of all four locos:

http://images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/ ... resnum=244

is from the

Cambria Genealogy had the closeup photo of 1 locomotive, with displaced ties under it, and credited it to Gibbons.

I lived in the Tri Cities between 1978 and mid 1980 and remember hearing this story from a few people who worked out there one person thought the locomotives were ex military 2-8-0 s supposedly dumped in the late 40s early 50s

From what I have read the bodies of the crew are still buried with it

As I recall reading the story in an old C&O Historical Society magazine, the body of the engineer was eventually recovered, but not the fireman. There may also have been some workers involved in the tunnel reconstruction project that were not recovered, but that is uncertain.

Les

Wanted to clarify the above entry. The fireman, although badly scalded, managed to escape the cave in by joining others in crawling under the flat cars that had been coupled behind the locomotive. Unfortunately, he died at a local hospital about 7 hours later. All told, there were 4 fatalities and when the C&O checked their list of laborers, found that two were missing along with engineer Tom Mason. There was some question about possibly others laborers also being missing as a new construction gang was taken on the morning of the accident, and that the possibility existed that not all of these men had their names added to the tunnel employment roster. Although the effort to recover Engineer Mason's body was eventually successful 9 days after the accident, after several more days of trying to find the missing workers bodies, the railroad decided that the instability of the tunnel made continued efforts too dangerous, and the effort was abandoned. The following year, the C&O sealed the locomotive, flat cars and the missing men's bodies, in the tunnel.

A quick word about the locomotive. Baldwin built C&O A-5 class 4-4-0 #231 in 1903 for the Chicago, Cincinnati & Louisville as their number 54. The engine was 22 years old when the accident occurred on October 2, 1925.

Another former CC&L steam locomotive still exists; Ten-Wheeler #108 which had been built by Baldwin in 1902 for the Cincinnati, Richmond & Muncie which became the CC&L in 1903. That locomotive is now preserved in Baltimore as C&O #377.

Les

In the 1988 book "Scalded To Death By The Steam" by Katie Letcher Lyle, there is a chapter in the book on the Church Hill tunnel disaster on pages 116-124, it has some pictures of the tunnel, one of the outside before the cave in with workers, and one inside after the cave in showing a partially burried flat car, and another of the tunnel after it was sealed up.

A fellow NS engineer i know who used to work the New Castle district from Ft. Wayne to Cincinnati told me a story a few years back of a burried locomotive that is still supposedly inside some collapsed tunnel down around Cincinnati,Ohio in a rather bad area that has a low income housing development built above it. I have never heard mention of this from anyone else before?

Well for what it's worth and if there is any truth to it or not of a supposed burried locomotive near Cincinnati, Ohio from the narrow gauge Cincinnati & Western? My fellow NS engineer friend sent me the link to it. Anybody else ever hear of this one?

http://www.cincinnati-transit.net/rollhill.htm [url][/url]

Hi,

I would like to mention that the White Pass narrow gauge had used it's old locos and equipment as riprap along the Yukon River. They were uncovered recently (past 10 years or so). The boiler to D&RGW rotary plow OO was found as well as other steam locomotive skeletons.

Doug vV