Wheelset from B&M No. 3666.
Kittery Historical and Naval Museum, Kim Sanborn
KITTERY, Maine — A wheel from a long-lost Boston & Maine steam locomotive that fell off a bridge and into a river in 1939 is now on display in Maine.
The wheel off of B&M No. 3666 was put on display at the Kittery Historical and Naval Museum earlier this month, a year after it was pulled up from the Piscataqua River between Portsmouth, N.H., and Kittery.
According to newspaper reports of the era, the locomotive was leading a southbound passenger train to Boston on the evening of Sept. 10, 1939, when the bridge collapsed. The locomotive and the first car went into the river, killing the engineer, John Beatie, and the fireman, Charles Towle. The locomotive sunk 70 feet to the bottom of the river and has sat there ever since.
The wreck sat at one spot in the river until it had to be dragged to another location when the river was dredged. Then the bridge was just replaced and again it was dredged up and more of it was pulled up. The current is extremely swift there and there is more parts that was pulled up but mother nature eliminated much of the engine and tender.
So out of the whole locomotive, you pulled up one wheel set? Not much of a display. Sorry to pee on others efforts, but when preserving history, if you don’t get enough of it then in the future when there is a need for that spot of land, they will say, “it’s one set of wheels, who cares” and likely scrap them. I’m not against preservation as I’m involved in it. And yes, I have thought about the fact that nothing else likely was able to be removed.
This is actually not a “wheel”, but a “set of wheels” or “pair of wheels”. I understand that the engine and the tender have separated and are no longer together.
“Maybe the wheels were dumped in the river from a car shop hiding the evidence where they bill the car owner for work not really needed. Per what happened recently on the west coast.”
This wheelset had inside bearings, since there are no extensions of the axle beyond the wheels. Very few freight vehicles have ever used this design. It is almost certainly from the lead truck of a steam locomotive.
Amtrak Amfleet cars have inboard bearings, but these are roller bearings and would still be in place, unless someone removed the wheels, then the bearings and then replaced the wheels, which seems very unlikely.
The wheelset is most likely what they say it is.
The locomotive either “sank” or “has/had sunk”.
The first link in the story is to the original Newswire article and contains a photo of the wheelset as pulled from the river with journal boxes in place. Apparently they were removed for display.
How did the set of wheel lose it’s journal boxes and fall lose from the locomotive. How do they know they are from that locomotives? Maybe the wheels were dumped in the river from a car shop hiding the evidence where they bill the car owner for work not really needed. Per what happened recently on the west coast.