Old railroads, ghost stories and mysteries

This isn't a ghost story but it creeped me out quite a bit.
My wife and I were visiting this train museum in PA called Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.:p

We were in Strasburg at the time eating (yum), and I wanted to go see some old, actual engines and get some pictures. They have a great outdoors section as well as a huge indoor rail house.
They have real looking stuffed RR people standing around the cars doing what they would do at the time. Fixing tracks and stuff. Really neat but the day we went, it was stormy and kinda dark. They creaped me out.
If I worked there I'd love to dress up and not move until someone passes me. HAHAHA

I went up on the catwalk so I could take a few shots overhead and heard some voices down below, so I figured a family was in there.
My wife was waiting for me at the bottom of the steps when I came down. I asked her if she heard the kids and she replied "no, what kids? We're the only idiots out in this storm."
We walked over to where I heard them and no one was there.
That's not the weird part.

I don't confess to know one engine from another but I heard creaking like a big piece of heavy machinery being moved.
"Oooo they may be moving in a new engine! This I have to see." We hurried over to the other side of the room where the noise was coming from and again, when I got to the area no one was there.
The sky was dark and I wanted to get out to see the yard, so I got a quick picture.
I was standing in front of this old F-3 (I looked up the type) and my wife was taking my picture of me when I heard the same creaking sound really loud, as I had before. I looked in back of me and I swear the F-3 moved toward me.
Margaret wound up getting a photo without me, because I was running across the room screaming like a little girl.

Outside she swears she never heard a thing. I've had the opportunity to go back since it's 2 hours from my home in NJ but I won't go.
 
I almost forgot there's a second part to this but it was only scary for me.
I lived right next to the PRR in NE Phila. when I was growing up and I remember them having passenger trains powered by GG1's.
I have a love-hate relationship for that engine because as a child I used to have nightmares about being stuck on the tracks and run over by one of them.

I remember they were at least 4 or so tracks wide so if we crossed the tracks on the way to school we had to go quick and watch our step as the trains would come pretty often.
I remember seeing the aftermath of a few people getting run over. Well I remember the ambulance and them scooping up what was left off the tracks. That only added to my fears.
My friends used to cross the tracks, and I went all the way around to Bridge street to go under the tracks. It's a wonder I even like trains.

While we were at the Train Museum, outside they had a GG1 that they were restoring and it took all I had just to go up and touch it. Nuts huh?
It was pretty cool being able to look inside the cab and imagine driving one of these.
 
Long ago the Altoona RR Memorial Museum had the GG1 #4913 engine Conductors inside cab compartment doors unlocked, so I walked around inside the carbody, till I got to the Engineer side inside door, which was locked. Through the grill I could see a bunch of people at the control stand, and the husband was busily thoroghly explaining the nomenclature of the GG1 to them ... I quietly (from behind the dark grill) I wiggled the door handle and spookiely muttred: " Booooooooooooooooooooooo ... I am the ghost of the great GG1 #4913" ... instantainiosly, the lady screamed bloody murder, and they all ran from the cab. Ever since then the inside engine compartment carbody doors have been wired shut with bailing wire. It was dark inside there, and full of peeling asbestos and bees, and smelled of PCBs and Oil. I caught up with the people on the museum grounds and apologised for scaring them.

How to go "Snipe Hunting":

Definition: Fictacious Animal-Snipe: A small nocternal ground dwelling furry brown critter that looks like a hedgehog.

When my son was young we all got his friends together, and armed with wiffle ball bats, paper bags, and flashlights ... I took them "Snipe" hunting in the old dark cemetary. A snipe hunt goes exactly like this: One person goes out into the dark waving a flashlight to chase down the snipes to flush them out of the bushs. Leaving his crew with explicit instructions to wait right there, and to whallop the fleeing snipes, and get em' in the bags. All goes well ... except the person who goes out in the bushes, ties his flashlight to a string on a distant tree, winds it up several turns, turns it on ... and leaves ... and goes home to watch TV ... leaving his chums holding the bag in the dark (so to speak).

I improved on this: For in my paper bag, I had a rolled up white disposable cleaners jumpsuit, with the hoodie having eye, nose and mouth cut out in the face. In the distance I quickly put the jumpsuit on over my clothes, and wearing it on backwards, I looked like a BOO Ghost. I secretly circled around behind them, and quietly came up from behind, and stood there silently, like Jason. All the while they muttered amongst themselves: "I don't see him anymore"..."Whats he doing out there"..."this is scary" ! Then from behind, in the dark, at the very same instant I tapped my hand on their shoulders, I said: .... " boo !" The screams were blood curdling as they all turned around to see a white cloaked figure standing behind them, in the old dark cemetary ! I got waffled by several of their wiffle ball bats that night.
 
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Wow, you just jogged my memory too. This one smelled funny too.
I wonder if they smelled that way when they were being driven?
A nasty environment for sure.
 
...Since I'm probably the only real South Park Line (DSP&P) enthusiast around... :hehe:


There's a tale I've heard of a few times, where way back in the days of the Railroad's operation, that the crew of a train died of asphyxiation in the Alpine Tunnel, which was the Highest and Longest Narrow Gauge tunnel in the entire U.S. (Both portals are blocked/collapsed now)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_Tunnel

Supposedly, their spirits take the form of one of the line's Locomotives, and can be seen near the Tunnel at night...


Someday I gotta see if I get the pants scared off me. :D
 
almost forgot the ghost of Horseshoe curve.

Back when they were building the curve, there was a camp of Irish workers (or so the legend goes), anyway, if you go to the curve on a Foggy night, and stand at the top, you can hear the Irish work gang songs. Another one is the lady in white of the curve. If you go to the curve on a dark and rainy night (ain't it always dark and rainy?) at midnight, drive through the tunnels, and honk your horn three times after turning your lights off ( I DO NOT CONDONE THIS!) After you leave the tunnel, you will be able to see a woman standing by a brick wall next to an old Spruce tree.
 
GaryP said:
This isn't a ghost story but it creeped me out quite a bit.
My wife and I were visiting this train museum in PA called Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.:p

We were in Strasburg at the time eating (yum), and I wanted to go see some old, actual engines and get some pictures. They have a great outdoors section as well as a huge indoor rail house.
They have real looking stuffed RR people standing around the cars doing what they would do at the time. Fixing tracks and stuff. Really neat but the day we went, it was stormy and kinda dark. They creaped me out.
If I worked there I'd love to dress up and not move until someone passes me. HAHAHA

I went up on the catwalk so I could take a few shots overhead and heard some voices down below, so I figured a family was in there.
My wife was waiting for me at the bottom of the steps when I came down. I asked her if she heard the kids and she replied "no, what kids? We're the only idiots out in this storm."
We walked over to where I heard them and no one was there.
That's not the weird part.

I don't confess to know one engine from another but I heard creaking like a big piece of heavy machinery being moved.
"Oooo they may be moving in a new engine! This I have to see." We hurried over to the other side of the room where the noise was coming from and again, when I got to the area no one was there.
The sky was dark and I wanted to get out to see the yard, so I got a quick picture.
I was standing in front of this old F-3 (I looked up the type) and my wife was taking my picture of me when I heard the same creaking sound really loud, as I had before. I looked in back of me and I swear the F-3 moved toward me.
Margaret wound up getting a photo without me, because I was running across the room screaming like a little girl.

Outside she swears she never heard a thing. I've had the opportunity to go back since it's 2 hours from my home in NJ but I won't go.
Click to expand...

the local museum has an old AT&SF 800-class 2-8-0 that I've known all my life. I called her "Stephney" in my earlier years.:hehe: however, once, when i went to visit her at the museum, i got the wits scared out of me.

There is a set of steps that lead up to the cab and inside, and in the cab all the controls move. as usual, i went up into the cab and started playing with the controls, pretending i was driving her. Now, it was overcast, drizzling a bit too, but i was oblivious to all that.

all at once, i swore i felt her lurch. i looked over to the fireman's seatbox, where my grandfather was sitting, and asked him, "Did you feel that?" he replied, "feel what?"

Okay, now i'm spooked, but not enough to abandon my play-engineer duties. i go back to what i was doing before, but a few minutes later, i feel her lurch again. this time, i think she rolled a few feet. "Did you feel THAT?!" i asked my grandpa. this time, he said, "Yeah, i did."

now thouroughly spooked, i get down from the seat and start making my way towards the other pieces of equipment at the museum, tapping the brake handle as i go out. As i walk down, i look at the brake shoes and, like they always were and are, they're tucked tight agianst the drivers. but to this day i swear she's a few feet farther back on her display track than she used to be. but the fact that grandpa felt the second lurch too makes us both think something was wrong. did the brake shoes slip? i don't know. all i know is, somehow, a 100-plus year old steam engine sitting on a level track somehow rolled three or four feet with her brakes tied down.

creepy, right?
 
This isn't really a ghost story per se, but still spooky none the less:

http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/76st.html

Basically, a subway station in New York City was mysteriously built as an extension to an existing line back in the 1940s, then was closed down a month later as mysteriously as it had opened. The station even now has vanished off all official MTA maps, although the tracks in the vicinity still show connections that lead apparently nowhere - the tunnels to the station most likely have been walled up.

To make matters even more spooky, nearly all traces of the station mysteriously vanished from official documentation (and doesn't include the apparent visitation of local residents by mysterious Air Force personnel asking questions about 'strange events', as mentioned on the above link).

(In reality, the whole thing was probably just an example of bureaucratic skullduggery involving the station being constructed with illegal labour, hence the cover-up when there was a risk of that being exposed).

And if that wasn't enough, the page on that station isn't even linked through the main page on the above site - you have to type the station's name into the search bar on the site to find it. :eek:
 
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If you go to Bethlehem, PA, go to the steel mills, and you may hear ghost trains, and sounds of the steel mill, spooooooooooooky!
 
Dude, I'd love to go check that out. See if that MILW car is there. I'd go with ya, if I could get to where you live, lol.
 
Silverpilen

Have you heard of Silverpilen? It is a legend of a Stockhelm Metro ghost subway train that is seen by workers in tunnels and also passes stations at full speed at midnight. It also stops to pick up "ghost passengers". The inside of the train is empty, but that's why ghosts are on board. It is also known to stop at open-air stations at night. The train is composed of C5 cars. Unlike other Stockhelm subways, the train is silver instead of green, which is the color of normal Stockhelm subway trains.
 
Does anyone know the shocking tale of the Scottish accident on the bridge that spans the Forth of Firth in the late 1800's. I could google it but then there wouldn't really be anything creepy aboot it eh laddies? Winter, ship hits bridge, steam train plummets into icy waters.
That story scared me shirtless when I was a kid :eek:
 
Would that bridge collapse be this one by any chance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Bridge_disaster ?

There was one slight difference though - the bridge collapsed not due to being struck by a boat, but because of metal fatigue caused by poor design and construction, with the bridge finally giving way in a storm. Either way, the result is the same - a train ends up going into the drink when the bridge collapses while the train is passing over it.

I do remember reading somewhere that a ghostly apparition of the train involved does indeed haunt the location, appearing on the annual anniversary of the disaster (it's even loosely referenced in an old Thomas the Tank Engine episode) but I haven't been able to find any info about it, so don't take that as actual fact. :p
 
cascaderailroad said:
Long ago the Altoona RR Memorial Museum had the GG1 #4913 engine Conductors inside cab compartment doors unlocked, so I walked around inside the carbody, till I got to the Engineer side inside door, which was locked. Through the grill I could see a bunch of people at the control stand, and the husband was busily thoroghly explaining the nomenclature of the GG1 to them ... I quietly (from behind the dark grill) I wiggled the door handle and spookiely muttred: " Booooooooooooooooooooooo ... I am the ghost of the great GG1 #4913" ... instantainiosly, the lady screamed bloody murder, and they all ran from the cab. Ever since then the inside engine compartment carbody doors have been wired shut with bailing wire. It was dark inside there, and full of peeling asbestos and bees, and smelled of PCBs and Oil. I caught up with the people on the museum grounds and apologised for scaring them.

How to go "Snipe Hunting":

Definition: Fictacious Animal-Snipe: A small nocternal ground dwelling furry brown critter that looks like a hedgehog.

When my son was young we all got his friends together, and armed with wiffle ball bats, paper bags, and flashlights ... I took them "Snipe" hunting in the old dark cemetary. A snipe hunt goes exactly like this: One person goes out into the dark waving a flashlight to chase down the snipes to flush them out of the bushs. Leaving his crew with explicit instructions to wait right there, and to whallop the fleeing snipes, and get em' in the bags. All goes well ... except the person who goes out in the bushes, ties his flashlight to a string on a distant tree, winds it up several turns, turns it on ... and leaves ... and goes home to watch TV ... leaving his chums holding the bag in the dark (so to speak).

I improved on this: For in my paper bag, I had a rolled up white disposable cleaners jumpsuit, with the hoodie having eye, nose and mouth cut out in the face. In the distance I quickly put the jumpsuit on over my clothes, and wearing it on backwards, I looked like a BOO Ghost. I secretly circled around behind them, and quietly came up from behind, and stood there silently, like Jason. All the while they muttered amongst themselves: "I don't see him anymore"..."Whats he doing out there"..."this is scary" ! Then from behind, in the dark, at the very same instant I tapped my hand on their shoulders, I said: .... " boo !" The screams were blood curdling as they all turned around to see a white cloaked figure standing behind them, in the old dark cemetary ! I got waffled by several of their wiffle ball bats that night.
Click to expand...
Wow, cascade, you sure know how to have fun! Also, I remember being inside PC #4882, another GG1 at the National New York Central Museum. Inside, it smelled funny like your and Gary's, but this one had rust holes in the floor and it was dark, musty, and HOT. Most likely from the black paint and the fact it was already a warm day!
 
This is interesting the engineer fell asleep at the throttle and his head got choped off killed hundreds of people. ...
By York River State Park
The trails in the park have much significance and are historically tied to the founding, struggles, and preservation of our nation. Why, one of the Virginia signers of the U.S. Constitution and first appointed Chief Justices of the Supreme Court owned land here and traveled these trodden paths. From the tobacco plantation era to the present day park, these trails held value and importance to the people who dwelt here in days gone by.
So you might well guess that these woods hold some haunting tales. One such trail is not a trail at all, but a track; a railroad track. The ghost train at Cohoke Crossing near West Point, just up the York River at its headwaters, holds with it a disturbing past. Even today this past somehow seems to have transcended time mysteriously into a haunting present. So much so that the sighting of a ghostly light on the tracks at night is not so uncommon.
Over the past 140 years or so literally thousands of tidewater residents swear they have witnessed the light that seemingly appears and disappears before their eyes. Even with this strong evidence of the apparition, there are still skeptics. To understand the legend of the light, we must first trace its origins.
After the battle of Cold Harbor during the Civil War in 1864 a train in Richmond was loaded with wounded Confederate soldiers and dispatched to West Point where they could recuperate or be sent further south for recovery and regrouping. The train left Richmond amid a soft chorus of moans and groans, but never reached its destination. It seems that when the train neared West Point that night it had to switch tracks while moving. Unfortunately, the trainsman responsible for manning the lever that allowed the train to continue on a safe route had fallen asleep. When he awoke in a great start from the oncoming steam engine, he tried frantically to wave it off with his red brake lantern to no avail. The train and its precious cargo were at the point of no return and could not stop. Man and machine suddenly succumbed to a quick and unfortunate end.
The terrible crash killed everyone aboard it including the trainsman on the tracks who was decapitated. Because of his actions of falling asleep it cost so many innocent souls their lives that night. What must of he been thinking at the end? He literally lost his head! After this unspeakable accident years ago, they say the trainsman still roams the tracks at night waving a red lantern. What is his ghost trying to overcome? Is it protecting other trains from a similar fate or is he simply looking for his lost head? If the latter be the case, I wouldn’t want to be the one in possession of the lost head when he finally comes to reclaim it!
 
Tunnel 19 on the North Bend Rail Trail in West Virginia is supposed to be haunted

Ghost of silver run tunnel
legend has it that on foggy, moonlit nights near
the Silver Run Tunnel (Tunnel 19), a beautiful woman
in a long, flowing dress appears. For many years
trains traveled through the hills between Grafton
(near Tygart Lake State Park) and Parkersburg. When
the train’s engineer brought his train to a shuttering
screeching halt in the Silver Run Tunnel on a foggy
evening in 1910, his crew, and his bosses, thought that
he was crazy. Up until that time he had been afraid
to tell the story: A beautiful woman with raven hair,
a long white gown with jeweled brocade would be
standing in the middle of the tracks at the far end of
the tunnel, but when he stopped the train, no one
was there.
The railroad changed engineers. But the next
engineer saw the same beautiful woman at the Silver
Run Tunnel. He too repeatedly stopped the train, to
find no one. Late one night, as he neared the tunnel,
the woman was standing on the moonlit tracks. He
threw open the train throttle and roared forward.
Phones began to ring in the Parkersburg railroad
terminal. “A train just passed with something white
on the front. It looked like a woman,” said the callers.
When the train arrived in Parkersburg, there was
nothing–not even a raveling of clothing or a hint that
anything had touched the front of the train.
Where did the woman come from? Where did she
go? And why did she want the train to come to a
screeching halt? Only the ghost of Silver Tunnel knows
for sure.
 
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