What railroad was it that crossed Kerr Lake? That ought to be easily discoverable. There is part of the story that speaks of letting the engine and train walk across the trestle unmanned, and then re-boarded on the opposite side. The impression that I recall from the information given was that this method of operation was used as a routine for some considerable time. It seems like the railroad would have had to have been a very informal shortline for that practice to persist.

Here a piece of information that I found giving the name of the railroad as the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad. Notice that they say the engine was never removed from the mud. My guess is that it was buried in the mud and that is why it was never removed. Considering this mention of mud, I would totally discard that little nugget about picnickers swimming down to ring the bell. That sounds made up and implausible on so many levels. For one thing, who would see that as a worthwhile objective? It sounds silly. So if you discard that detail, the mud explanation seems totally plausible. I will bet that none of the wreck is exposed above the lake bottom. That is why divers are not talking about it.

The satellite map shows an active railroad crossing the lake today. I have seen a video of the lake showing the active railroad bridge and it is a box girder type of bridge supported on several concrete piers.

One pertinent question is whether this existing railroad route is in the same location of the old S&R RR route. It may or may not be.

http://www.kerrlakeguide.com/node/382

Quote from the link:

Train Wreckage?

Also reportedly flooded by Kerr Lake is the wreckage of Engine Number 2 of the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad. Well before the lake, there was a towering 80 foot train trestle that crossed Nutbush Creek in Vance County. Historians say a forest fire had scorched the bridge, but it supposedly appeared safe. On March 27, 1918 the bridge collapsed as the train crossed. Two men died. Locals say the engine was never removed from the mud below the trestle. That area was flooded by Kerr Lake and reportedly some folks would dive down and ring the submerged locomotive's bell!

Ron -

Not so! The Norfolk Southern crew across Young's High Bridge had a similar operation. In their case, the crew detrained on one side of the bridge, set the SW-1 to a crawl, got into a company vehicle riding across the river on the paralleling highway bridge and then got on the train on the other side after it made it across. Young's High Bridge was wrought iron, never modified or strengthened and NS was apparently a bit leery of its safety. It still stands today, near the end of the Bluegrass Railroad Museums trackage.

I believe I have read about other operations of a similar vein on other Class 1 railroads.

Les

Les,

Well then maybe that part of the story is true. I would have thought that that sort of unmanned running would be illegal. But I have seen it done on a class I railroad as part of crew change routine.

Kids. I grew up a few miles from a lake, and the big thing was swimming out to the control area bouy, going under, grabbing the chain and hauling yourself to the bottom of the lake to touch the large concrete anchor. The lake was about 20 feet deep but it felt like your head was going to implode at that depth with no mask, snorkel or swim fins.
My point was you wouldn't think that would be a goal, either but it was. Kids prided themselves on doing it, and we often accused one another about lying about getting to the bottom of that lake...

Also bear in mind that not many kids had Ipods or cell phones in 1918. No television and I don't think radio was around or was in its infancy. In other words, there just wasn't a whole lot to do in those days. The lake was probably a swimming hole for the kids and the challenge of ringing a bell on an underwater locomotive would've been lots of fun back then.

I didn't realize that the trestle was that high. I got the impression that the lake covered the trestle remains as well as the train. Did they ever rebuild that trestle? Seems like if the train only consisted of 3 cars then it might not have been worth keeping that line open.

Well if the kids swam down to ring the bell, I guess the locomotive must be there. Probably the best bet for getting more details would be to contact somebody like that historian in the video linked to the first post. I cannot tell by the story if there is any question as to the existence of the train today. It generally seems that there is not. The one thing that has changed is the depth of the water, but that should not be a showstopper for divers. And they are always looking for things to explore. That legend I mentioned at Pine City has had divers looking for the wreck in Devils Lake there several times in recent history. Divers around Henderson, NC should know about the Kerr Lake legend. It would be interesting to contact a dive shop in the area.

Since two people were killed, I assume there must be ample newspaper coverage that might talk about the conditions of the lake bottom among other details.

Ya know, there do seem to be some plot holes in this saga. First off, the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad was merged into the Seaboard Air Line Railway in the 1880's so the company didn't exist at the time of the accident. Secondly, if the two brothers made it a practice to send the train across as described, then why didn't they do it this time, especially when the integrity of the trestle was in question? Finally, wouldn't the train have hit the trestle on the way down and tumbled instead of diving straight down as it sounds? They couldn't have been going very fast given the circumstances.

The complete World War 2 railroad shop in the woods is probably the Quincy & Torch Lake RR (the East Broad Top is too new).
Black River & Western RR folks ell the tale that Central Railroad of New Jersey crews in the early 1970s didn't trust the railroad bridge on the Flemington branch at Three Bridges (now 2 bridges) N.J. One of the train crew would precede the train on foot across the bridge, then another would open the throttle slowly and jump of to follow on foot. The 1st person, already on the other side, would catch the train when it arrived there. I don't know what the caboose crew did. Eventually, various deals were made with connecting railroads to detour the traffic.and not use the bridge.

I found the Quincy and torch Lake RR listed with a small blurb in RAILROAD MAGAZINE and it seemed unbelievable. It said the road was a six-mile-long, narrow gage with ore cars, caboose, two water tanks, turntable, yard tracks, and four steam locomotives in an engine house. Even TRAINS magazine had covered it in an article called “Dead But Not Buried” by Editor, David P. Morgan. I wrote a letter to Quincy Mining, and asked if the Q&TL was for sale. They said no, but they would be glad to have me come up and look at their railroad.

That was during the winter, and I ventured up there in the following spring. Around midnight, I dropped down into the big valley with the twin towns of Houghton and Hancock, and then followed my senses up the big hill for my first encounter with the Q&TL.

The next morning, I explored the entire site at both ends of the line as well as much of the line itself. Between the abandoned, intact steam railroad system and the exhilaration of the Copper Country in springtime, I came away thoroughly inspired.

If you're referring to my post, I was referring to a facility many states from there, in the Deep South.
It was scraped clean (probably about the time of WW2 or early 50s) by the time I actually found it in the early 90s...
The funny part was I still hear of rumors of that place being complete with engines still parked there, via a pal of mine who lives in the area (who has given up showing my photos of the place to those who contend it's still there -none of whom have even claimed to have seen it in person- because even after seeing them, nobody believes it's all gone).

So many crazy stories like that...there is an engineering professor at a local college who tells his students that "the coal hauling railroads in Virginia still use steam engines because they have such excellent torgue" and I have heard from others that "the government stored a bunch of steam locomotives in a field in case of nuclear war so they would have some engines that would still run".

I guess these fall into the realm of "urban belief stories"...there just ain't no killing them. They will outlive us all.

T7

Well it is known that Russia did store them for that very reason, as did Sweden and I think maybe a couple of other countries did as well.
But yeah, not the US. But they probably should have once the threat of a nuclear-initiated EMP became clear and the USSR had the capability of detonating a high-yield nuke in the atmosphere to create an EMP during the Cold War...

EMP (electromagnetic pulse) would only affect solid state electronics... anything using vacuum tubes or simple electric circuits will still operate. In fact, solid state stuff will work too...if it was fully powered off before the pulse hits.
The pulse causes damage by causing inductive currents in the circuits under power...solid state type electronics cannot handle the current surges which burn out the various components, such as transistors, on chips...
In military applications, "hardening" the electronics usually involves caging the boxes, etc with coils of copper wire, etc to dissipate the pulse...
I'm,of course, not including the other part of hardening against various levels of radiation damage from nuke detonations...

The storing of steam engines had more to do with simply having more equipment available rather than losing running engines....
It's a common misconception about EMP ruining anything electrical...as an example, a high altitude EMP will cause massive power outages...not because it destroys the generators, but because it destroys the solid state regulating equipment...and thus creating a cascading overload and failure...

There's a VERY long tradition of people referring to railroads by their "original" name as long as decades after a merger, especially in an area with multiple lines to be distinguished from one another. In addition, local maps often don't get updated in a timely fashion, and even the US Geological Survey had this problem in the past. This "plot hole" doesn't strike me as the least bit suspicious.

When I was in the U.K. in 1991, a few older enthusiasts still referred to certain lines by the names of companies that hadn't existed since 1923............