Lost lokey in the woods - true story

Yet another variation of the "engine buried in a tunnel" railfan urban legend is the "lost lokey in the woods" tall tale . In the Western forests ,every locality seems to have their own version of this . While the "tunnel" tale is total b.s. , there are a few of lost locomotives that have been brought out of the forests over the years . The best tale is of a 1929 Alco 2-8-2-towned by Hammond Lumber out of Samoa , California . A 1947 forest fire left this locomotive stranded in a remote logging camp .
It sat there till the mid-1960s when a gentleman named Gus Peterson salvaged it for his own short-lived Klamath and Hoppow Valley , a short-lived and obscure tourist road I actually rode . It is nowstored up at Mount Rainier Scenic RR in Washington .
Also in the late 1960s a small Climax was found in the woods on Vancouver Island .A fellow there brought it home , repaired the drive train with truck driveshafts and universals and supposedly ran it on 200 feet of track on his property .
Some of you may have seen the wonderful little 2-foot gauge Shay run at Heritage Square around 1980 . It sat for decades in the high weeds and trees in Alabama ,before being rescued and repaired .