The Haunted Tank Train

 A most unusual engine appeared on the Salmon Run & Robson Landing Railway shortly after the end of World War Two. The board of directors, anxious to benefit from the boom in the lumber business, cast about desperately for extra locomotives — at a low price, of course. An advertisement in a lumber industry newsletter offered a heavily used narrow gauge 0-4-4-0, currently owned by the Sleepy Hollow & Tarrytown Railroad. For a few dollars plus shipping across North America, it could become the SR&RL Ry’s very own.

And so, the SR&RL wired the asking price to Sleepy Hollow and arranged for the Canadian Pacific to haul it all the way to Courtney, Vancouver Island, on a flat car. There, it was offloaded onto the SR&RL right of way, put under steam, and run all the way up to Robson Landing. When the board of directors first spied their purchase, they almost suffered collective cardiac arrest. It looked like something out of a fantastic Jules Verne novel, an impossible hunk of machinery, part armoured car, part inside cylinder steam engine, part nightmare. The contraption even had a three-inch howitzer in a sponson to the right of the driver compartment, ostensibly to fire blanks and scare bears, deer, moose, and little children off the track.

 

It quickly became the bane of crews — impossibly hot inside, with horrible visibility, and a growing reputation for being haunted. Close valves would open, and open valves close without human intervention; the bizarre three-inch gun would load itself with a blank round and go off, and tools would vanish only to reappear in a different spot. And so, after a few weeks, it was parked on a siding in Courtney and quietly forgotten. The SR&RL Ry’s board of directors scrubbed all mention of the ill-fated purchase from the corporate annals and promptly voted themselves an increase in per diems.

If only the story had ended there…

On the following October 31^st, long after the sun had set and all SR&RL engines where in their sheds either in Robson Landing or Courtney, and the main line was clear, a boxy dark shape was seen speeding out of Courtney Junction heading north. Neither its headlight nor taillight were lit, but a strange red glow pulsed through the portholes on either side and through the driver’s window. Of a crew, there was no trace.

 

Steam whistle shrieking, bell ringing, the apparition tore through the towns along the SR&RL right-of-way, terrifying humans and animals alike. Dogs howled, cats hissed, and wildlife shrank away in fear. It rounded through Robson Landing’s loop and headed south again without slowing down and vanished into the darkness.

When the sun rose on the morning of November 1^st, the engine from Sleepy Hollow sat on its siding in Courtney, cold, with no indication it had moved in weeks. Yet hundreds of witnesses swore they saw it run up and down the line on All Hallow’s Eve, like a giant mechanical hound from Hell.

Since then, the engine has been seen on numerous occasions and not just October 31^st, its ghastly run presaging dire events. The SR&RL tried to sell it off without success and when ordered to dismantle it in place, the company’s engineers refused. No one would touch a haunted locomotive. And no one would ever find out how it came to be constructed in the first place. After receiving their money, the previous owners refused to speak with the SR&RL and within a few years, the Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown Railroad faded away never to be heard from again.

***

The haunted train project originated with a miniature red, incandescent bulb which flashed at a variable rate and had been used in an HO scale haunted house I built long ago, when I operated in HO. I sold the house, but kept the bulb, intending to some day use it in an On30 project, then forgot about its existence until it resurfaced a few months ago. Considering what I had in mind, I didn’t want to use one of my “good” locomotives for the project and kept looking at my local hobby dealer’s bargain table whenever I visited to restock.

The other day, he had half a dozen old HO scale Bachmann F units for sale at a price that, if my project failed, I could write off without heartache. So, I bought one, installed a spare DCC unit and got it running. But, those old motors sure do draw a lot of amperage. Still, it ran reliably over turnouts. Then came the new shell, and I wanted something to convey spookiness, but go find that in a scale usable for a 1:48. Yet I got lucky in the other hobby store I sometimes visit, finding a 1:35 scale plastic model kit of a clunky World War One Schneider CA tank. Perfect!

Modifying the tank to fit the F unit chassis was easier than I could have hoped, and by judiciously using the tank’s various parts and items from my junk box (like the cow catcher, smoke stack, bell and whistle), I built something very steam punk, though that term wouldn’t come into use decades after the SR&RL acquired the haunted locomotive.

Since my layout is full lit, I run a lot of nighttime consists, and now, when they’re safely parked on sidings and everyone’s in bed, maybe a menacing black engine with a flashing red interior light might appear, heralding a future disaster.