WOW

29 posts...and 5 of them about that topic locomotive...

Why you guys did not open an own threat...???...if you have something to say...

sorry no offend just thinking...

Well, the topic is "Barn finds", not "This barn find." Sort of leaves the field open.

How recent was this? I imagine that NS would have cleaned all this old stuff out when they started purging the old cars stored in the Brush yard part of Altoona.

Truth. It’s possible now, whether or not anyone does it. Because the T1 Trust insisted on scanning and archiving all of the T1 blueprints, etc., the next project may be easier.

The smaller the loco, the more likely it is that one may have survived. My biggest regret along those lines was the tsunami that scattered the narrow gauge cars and locomotives stored (outdoors, so they weren’t in great shape) on Oahu. Back in TrainNet days, one of the staff hiked out to where the remains ended up and confirmed that there wasn’t a builder’s plate or a chunk of jewelry to be seen. The only pieces of evidence that they might be the mashed remains of the last two OR&W locos are a kids’ book and my dad’s story about riding out to the cane and pineapple fields during WWII. (He thought the cars looked awfully familiar, but was about to write it off to “maybe all the narrow gauge is like that,” except that he saw same familiar graffiti. The conductor told him the whole outfit came from a scrap line in Bellaire, Ohio, where it was dumped onto a barge at the wharf and hauled out through New Orleans while the rest of the equipment was indeed scrapped.)

I dimly remember a photograph of one of the shop buildings across what looked like a field, and among the vines were two pairs of those eight-wheel trucks, one in partially-disassembled condition. Expect all this went for scrap a couple of decades ago when the Chiese were buying -- around the same time we lost the rebuilt Shark B-unit that was like an RS-18 above the deck...

I would like to find someone with a magnetometer to check wether there is a chance that a Great Northern steam locomotive is buried in a shallow lake in central Minnesota. The story is that it derailed and fell off a small bridge and was never recovered because it’s value even as scrap was less than the cost of removing it. This happened before WW2 so it could be an older loco.
M. Nix

That idea was actually done, but to establish an iron mine.

The French Creek area has had iron mines since Valley Forge was an actual forge close to Philadelphia. [Gen'l Lord Cornwallis destroyed the forge in 1777]

After WWII Bethlehem Steel chartered an airplane to fly over the area with a magnetometer to find the main body of iron ore. They found it and built Grace Mine on the site, bringing the Reading Company a lucrative on-line move.

R.Co.'s newest RS-3's had hump control to pull the hoppers under the loader at a steady pace so they could load without stopping. They still used the hoppers to unload as not all the furnaces had dumpers. In time, GP40-2's with hump control replaced the RS-3's. The mine closed in early ConRail.

Phil Mulligan

IIRC there were numerous reports some years ago of SCUBA divers saying they found a steam locomotive on the bottom of a lake in north central Minnesota in about 100 ft. of water.

I can't recall if anyone followed through to confirm this or not.

Might be there???

Ross Rowland

There was a CPR 4-6-0 that was explored by divers that went off a cliff into Lake Superior in Ontario around 1910 or so

Actually there are still quite a few railroad barn finds. However; due to their size railcars are not in the barn, they ARE the barn, fishing cabin, hunting lodge, tool shed, chicken coop or whatever.

No , this one is near St Cloud, I can show you the exact spot it’s supposed to be buried. It is known that a local recovered a bell from the wreck early on but the locals say the loco was never recovered. The RR grade is now a public trail so access to the site is not a problem. If it’s there, recovery would be similar to what they had to do “ down under” a couple of years ago. The Only way to recover it would be with the TOTAL support of the Minnesota State Historical Society as the state claims everything lost in lakes and rivers and the trail is the easiest public access. That all being said if it was there and could be identified as really worthy of preservation it could be recovered. Yeah don’t tell me,I know there are too many if’s, but stranger things have happened.
There are two kinds of people in the world, those that say it can’t be done and those that find a way to do it.

...And the CPR Consolidation, 600 feet down in a cold freshwater lake in British Columbia. That one has been located and seen using an RV.

The USN has recovered that F-35 from 12,400 feet down in the South China Sea. 600' down to that CPR Consol? Can do. Just need a USN sized budget.

Phil Mulligan

How about an entire train, circa 1875, in good condition? Verified, too....

https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/1998/04-20/0022_historic_find__train_to_be_raised.html

Still all there, BTW.

And another, located and verified by the U.S. Navy, no less:

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19950724&slug=2133047

Haven't yet found the proverbial lost locomotive myself, but discovered many interesting things looking. In this I have learned three things: 1) people like to embellish and retell stories, 2) surprisingly much more often than not something real started the story, and 3) the effort to sort it all out (besides being very educational) is way too fun not to go for it.

There was in fact an old engine house (barn if you will) I drove by many times and even walked near over the course of years, never looking inside. The steam locomotive that was inside now runs on the Virginia and Truckee.....

Timothy

It wasn't too many years ago that I asked Mr. Son Gil-shin, now retired as the curator of the Korean Railroad Museum in Uiwang, south of Seoul, about the existence of any US-built steam locomotives in Korea. He assured me that all of them had been scrapped. My own observation is that Koreans, while treasuring the ancient past, don't get too thrilled about such things as foreign-made steam locomotives from the 20th century, and instead they scrap old equipment and use the steel to make something new.

In 1951 the US Army shipped 41 EMD SW8s that were used by its railway operating battalions during the war. In the aftermath most were shipped home while some were left for the Koreans. Only one of those left in Korea remains, ex-US Army 2011. (Koreans renumbered their SW8s which tended to confuse matters. This one became KNR 2001, often confused with US Army 2001.) I visited it in the big shops in Busan (formerly spelled Pusan) where the 765th Transportation Railway Shop Battalion had operated during the war. It's inoperative but a representative of KORAIL said they plan to put it on display, probably somewhere in the city of Busan, as it is the oldest diesel in the country and is considered an item of historical significance.

If you get over there yourself you'll find it's hard to catch a taxi to the rail shops. While the rail complex is huge, generally speaking, taxi drivers and tourist information offices aren't going to be able to locate it for you because it's just not where most tourists go. Prior to leaving on that trip I found some pictures online of a visit many years ago by veterans of the 765th TRSB and noted the buildings in the background, such as one for a broadcasting company. That helped our taxi driver to locate the main gate to the complex. As we were leaving we noticed the Buam subway station was right by the main gate. If you get there yourself (possibly by rail to the main station in Busan), get on the local subway system and head to the Buam station. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble. Bring an interpreter too (I did) because no one there spoke English.