I had a son of a local rancher from the Burnt River country give me a little info on the engine Taylor is talking about. He claimed his father could take us to it or direct us. I believe the guy, but have never been able to catch the father home on the rare occasions when I could persue it. It was described as a boiler and cab in the bottom of a steep canyon. Jerry and I concluded that this probably indicated a geared engine that had lost it's trucks in the tumble down and the fact that the cab remained ruled out some of the early engines with wood cabs. The guy I talked to also described finding an old logging camp site in the same general drainage which is pretty vast (we were looking down into it through a thunder storm yesterday afternoon). In this camp was a barrel full of large brass parts. My guess has been it was a stockpile of journal brasses.
Some people have said there may be a many as 5 lost locos in the wood out here. This might seem like something easy to confirm or to find untill you see the vastness and verticle relief of the country. The SVRy was 80 miles, but some say that there were in excess of 1500 miles of logging grades in the adjacent mountains. Some of these extend upwards of 20 miles from a connection with the SVRy, which perhaps gives some idea of the square miles to search in. This is mainly all heavily timbered country.
To make matters worse, rumors and helpful tips have surfaced from time to time that were generated as gags to send some of us nuts off on a wild goose chase. Jerry and I followed one such set of directions which included driving up a certain road, walking a certain direction till we came on an old grade with ties on it, follow the ties in a certain direction till you find an area where there is still rail in place and follow the rail to the lost locomotive still setting upright on rail. The gist was that we ended up not on a logging grade but on the old SVRy mainline and if we had followed it for a good # of miles we'd have ended up at McEwen and bumped into #20 sitting on the spur in front of the depot.
I regard "the great search" as a good excuse to spend time out getting excercise in the great outdoors in some of the most beautiful country in these parts. If I find a rr artifact it's a treat, but not nescessary to enjoy hiking old grades.
