Friends of the Rail Forum

Strictly speaking this is off-topic, but I know many of us are also interested in steam engines of the non-railway variety. This is a video showing a dive on a sunken ship containing Fowler steam engines.

Click on the picture

Hmm, pity. Youtube is "out of bounds" to me, in persuit of an IT policy as is befitting a modern communications media company!

Me too! We can but dream etc...

On the History Channel on DSTV last night there was a documentary about two sunken steam locomotives in the USA. These are real railway locos. They're about five miles off the New Jersey coast in 90 feet of water, and are on their own, not in a wrecked ship. The sea has preserved them remarkably well.

In the irritating style of modern documentaries, they couldn't just tell the story, they had to make it into a sort of detective mystery to find out the provenance of the locos. They were 2-2-2 locomotives from the mid-19th century. Railroad experts (who could probably have short-circuited a lot of the "exciting" detective work) say they are quite an unusual type, made in Boston, very heavy, probably only 13 built, and only nine of those can be accounted for. Best guess seems to be that they either fell off a ship on which they were being transported as deck cargo during a storm or were deliberately ditched by the crew to lighten the load.

DSTV tends to repeat things (interminably!) so I'm sure it will be on again - it's called "Underwater Train Wreck".

Last night, for the fourth time this week, I found my house, remarkably well preserved in the darkness that is Johannesburg these days. Maybe Discovery might like to run a 'detective' documentary on that, more modern, phenomenon.

My power outage was this morning 0600-0900. Needless to say, just as I had finally boiled water on my charcoal stove to make tea, the power came on again. But of course the internet didn't, since my ISP is presumably on a different power outage schedule to me...