The Lost Engines of Roanoke

July 25, 2008 12:18 PM

"Looking for all the world like an engine abandoned in the Amazon jungle, M2 class 4-8-0 number 1118 lies forlorn and forgotten at the Virginia Scrap Iron and Metal yard in Roanoke, VA." The Lost Engines of Roanoke website chronicles the history of four steam locomotives that were sold in the 50's to a scrapyard in Roanoke, Virginia. There are plenty of photos of the engines and other train equipment and information on two other lost engines. The news section has been busy of late since one of the engines has been sold to a railroad themed restaurant in Bellville, Ohio. The move was photodocumented.
posted by Kattullus (10 comments total)

Train people are an impressively monomaniacal sort. Narrow set of interests, but a nearly bottomless appetite for information, history, and train-related doodads.
posted by unixrat at 1:42 PM on July 25, 2008

The move was photodocumented

Is the slow loading time on this link to remind us of a softer, gentler slower, yawn-inducing time when the world wasn't so fast and demanding? It works. I actually got some work done while waiting for the page to load. Stupid link makin' me work and crap....


Oh... and wouldn't these classify as steamjunk? buh dum cha!
posted by Debaser626 at 1:56 PM on July 25, 2008

There's some neat ruined trains round my neck of the woods. I'm just going to cut-and-paste from this comment, as it was at the end of a thread and no bugger saw it:

Another variant on steam trains: I was at the Northwest Train Museum the other day (or the outdoor part of it that consists of a bunch of decaying old steamtrains on a track) and saw soem very weird looking trains: Geared Steam Locomotives. Designed for steeper track and poorer conditions they work on a different priciple to the conventional steam trains and come in a bunch of weird designs, like this v cylinder one or this one with side mounted drive shafts.

I felt a bit like I'd stumbled upon the Burgess shale of steam trains.
posted by Artw at 2:31 PM on July 25, 2008

That comment is some kind of thread-killer. I'll have to try it out on some threads that aren't even steam-engine related.
posted by Artw at 4:36 PM on July 25, 2008

.
posted by Mach5 at 5:09 PM on July 25, 2008

I'm surprised there's interest in getting some of them running again. The rust looks completely out of control, especially in one of those pics that showed an engineers compartment. Many of the bolts and nuts looked fused together by the rust.
posted by crapmatic at 12:19 AM on July 26, 2008

Artw: first time around, that comment caused me to spend 45 minutes on Cambrian fossils and punctuated evolution, and to wishlist Stephen Jay Gould's book. So somebody read it.
posted by Leon at 11:54 AM on July 26, 2008

equilibrium. damn.
posted by Leon at 12:05 PM on July 26, 2008

Aha. So the comment actually disappears people in time.
posted by Artw at 1:07 PM on July 26, 2008

hey Kattullus, thanks for that post.

To the unenlightened: the attraction to trains and locomotives is probably formed in childhood, and may be genetic, or at least contagious (e.g. contracted from a favourite uncle. Thanks, Uncle Dick).

They're fascinating to watch (full-size or in miniature), and the enjoyment of trains doesn't lead to cancer or moral decay. Yet.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:50 PM on July 26, 2008