The locomotive in Mud Lake, just west of Hopkins, is a legend known only by a few people in the area, and several people who last worked for the M&StL. From 1871 to 1901, the railroad crossed the lake on a 280-foot-long trestle. Afterwards, an earth fill replaced the trestle. The loss of the locomotive probably occurred during the trestle phase.
The legend is not widely known, and it is somewhat obscured by a more widely known legend of a locomotive lost is Shady Oak Lake, which is only a couple thousand feet away. The M&StL also crossed that lake on a pair of trestles, which were later filled, but the engine lost in Shady Oak was a construction 0-4-0T during the relocation of the Milwaukee Road in 1913. That engine fell through a temporary trestle being used to make a fill, and is buried in the fill under what today is the mainline of the Twin Cities and Western RR.
All of these urban legends of perfect 4-8-4s left in tunnels or sheds, abandoned, forgotten, and free for the taking seemed to be born of a thirst for an easy acquisition of what would otherwise be a nearly impossible objective, that is to build a 4-8-4. That notwithstanding, there are lost locomotives that fell into lakes, rivers, and other watery predicaments, especially during the pioneering era of the 1800s. However, their value, if recovered, would not be in the easy acquisition of a locomotive to operate. Indeed, the recovery would likely cost ten times what it would cost to build a new one. The values of these lost relics would be their status as historical artifacts, not as candidates for restoration or operation.
All of this raises the question of what should be done with recovered locomotives such as the one that may be removed from the Church Hill Tunnel in Richmond, VA, or the pair of Planet class locomotives that will be shortly recovered from the ocean off the coast of New Jersey.
