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Loose Ends

Old Train found in sink hole in Ohio

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walt
Big Boy

Status: offline

Posted - August 29 2020 : 05:03:09 AM

May be a hoax since the info is coming from Portsmouth, Ohio. Home of poverty, drugs and corruption.https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10159063294893028&set=a.10150109013533028

Edited by - walt on August 29 2020 05:05:52 AM

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BlaxlandAlex3
Big Boy

Status: offline

Posted - August 29 2020 : 08:11:56 AM

Hoax. Look closely at he images. The people, crane, and locomotive are all photoshopped. The locomotive isn't even american, lol

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Erik The Train Nerd
Hudson

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Posted - August 29 2020 : 08:40:32 AM

Yeah that's European if you look closely the photos definitely photoshopped and the locomotive is in way too good condition it have been buried since the civil war

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Chops124
Big Boy

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Posted - August 29 2020 : 09:03:26 AM

Hoax.

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RP model railroads
Big Boy

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Posted - August 29 2020 : 10:06:10 PM

Complete hoax. LOL

"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in Heaven." - Matthew 5:16

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Heihachi_73
Switcher

Status: offline

Posted - September 10 2020 : 8:25:37 PM

The fact it was posted on Fakebook/Farcebook/Fecesbook (etc.) and nowhere else says it all.

Warning: Humongous wall of non-fiction text ensues!

Keeping slightly to topic, in Melbourne Australia, a number of Harris electric suburban trains were dumped in a large pit of quicksand at a landfill site in the late 80s to early 90s, they resurfaced several years later due to air inside the cars and had to be sunk again (after smashing the windows the trains never rose up again). As they were made of plain steel, there would probably be nothing left of them except for some fake wood panels and asbestos insulation these days.

The asbestos is the reason why the trains were withdrawn. They were built from 1956 through to the late 1960s, and by the 1980s they were in poor condition as you would expect from a metro train (think of a subway car, but without the subway) after 20+ years of daily use and vandalism without any major restoration.

VicRail tried to save them by removing the asbestos and refurbishing them to the latest standards of the time (the first refurbished cars were completed in 1981), but in 1983 VicRail was swallowed by the government and split up into the Metropolitan Transit Authority (suburban, now Metro Trains Melbourne, probably more well known for the "Dumb Ways to Die" safety campaign) and V/Line (regional/rural), and overall it was found to be cheaper to simply buy new trains (Commonwealth Engineering aka Comeng "disc brake" sets, cars 561M-680M and 1131T-1190T, the first of which entered service in 1984) than to rebuild the trains and safely remove and dispose of the asbestos.

Only 16 of the Harris cars ended up being refurbished for electric service, which were informally known as the Grey Ghosts due to their unique livery after being repainted from their original blue and yellow (the other modern trains had stainless steel bodies but the Harris trains were plain old rust-prone steel). Unfortunately, the refurbishment added air conditioning and several tons of reinforcement to keep the pair of heavy aircon units on each roof, which made the trains underpowered due to retaining the original traction motors, and restricted to just three lines with minimal hills (Sandringham, Port Melbourne and St Kilda). Not only that, but since the electrical systems and driver controls were modernized to make them similar to the new Comeng trains, it put the controls a couple of feet back, making the driver's visibility out of the already tiny windows very poor. The final straw was when the Port Melbourne and St Kilda lines were closed down and turned into light rail in 1987, leaving the four Grey Ghost sets nowhere to go but the Sandringham line as they were banned from everywhere else and the newer trains had already been built. Additionally, one of the sets was heavily damaged when Melbourne had flash flooding in 1989, with the train being stuck at Windsor station in a 4 foot deep puddle from one end of the station to the other (electricity and water really don't mix).

There was a success story however. While the 16 refurbished electric cars were considered a failure, a lot more Harris cars were refurbished in the same way but converted to locomotive-hauled interurban cars known as the H sets. With a diesel locomotive up front, these cars didn't suffer the problems of slow acceleration, electrical overloading and poor visibility from the driver's cabs, and several sets are still in service today, some 60 years after they were originally built.

All but five of the sixteen Grey Ghost cars, including the flood-damaged set, were converted into loco-hauled stock matching the others, with the only Grey Ghosts scrapped being 901M, 904M, 905M, 906M and 907M (the additional driver-controlled "M" cars were of no use to V/Line as they had already converted several to guards vans by clearing out the driver's area and replacing the front end with the rear section of a normal car).

In total, only four electric Harris cars still exist, all of which are driver-control cars: 795M in original 1960s condition, 903M in 1980s refurbished condition (both of which are on static display at the rail museum*), and 794M and 797M which are in very poor condition, as they had been used since the 80s as a works train until three out of the four air compressors failed in circa 2003 or 2004 rendering it unsafe to drive, and no replacement parts available as every other train of its type had been scrapped or converted (these two cars have not been restored, are in works yellow, are covered in rust, have no seats and a lot of broken windows, and are in very poor mechanical condition having not been touched for nearly twenty years).

* Sadly, the rail museum (ARHS Victoria) went bankrupt over the past several months to a year (unrelated to the coronavirus) and has gone into administration.

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