Haunted Train Stories

TrainClown

Member
Yup. I'm goona' have a ghost train on my layout to go along with the abandoned town. oooOOOOooooh! Scary! :eek:

A friend of mine got a book for there birthday about ghost stories and in it was a story about a ghost train. Here is the condensed version. ;)

Back just after the turn of the century, there was a town here in Saskatchewan called Louisiana. (probably a ghost town now itself) One night an engineer stopped his train to check out something he noticed amiss. While he was walking beside his train, another train sped passed on an adjacent track. The poor ol' engineer lost his balance and fell against the speeding train and promptly lost his head!

When the porter noticed the train was idle, he went to look for the engineer and found him lying beside the tracks, and he called for some help. Some cops showed up as well as some ambulance guys, but they were perplexed. They couldn't find his head! They searched and searched, but no head was to be found.

Some time after that, a man and his wife were walking home down the tracks late one evening. It was a bright moonlit night. The man heard something behind them and looked over his shoulder and saw the light of a lantern quite a ways down the track. They began to hurry because they didn't want to encounter anyone that late, all alone on the tracks like that. The wife turned to see where the lantern was and gasped at what she saw. Right behind them was a man in engineer coveralls with no head! He was swinging a lantern around and bobbing as though he was looking for something. The figure was ethereal and partly transparent. The husband had a start too when he turned to see what his wife was gasping at. They both ran off the tracks and away from the ghostly apparition. After a ways, they turned to see nothing. As they stood there to catch there breath a moment, they heard a train coming, but when the train appeared, it was a ghostly engine that seemed to glow in the moonlight. And there at the throttle was the headless engineer, leaning out the window, looking for his head.

There are other accounts of people seeing this ghostly engine, as it swoops down the track near Louisiana, Saskatchewan, with it's headless engineer, forever looking for his lost head.

Sleeep tiiiiight nooooooooow. :sleeping:

TrainClown ;) :wave:

Oh yea, here is the cover of the book this story first appeared in from 1933.
Anyone else have a haunted train story?
 

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brakie

Active Member
TC,Just about every railroad had ghost stories from headless brakeman and conductors to ghostly train wrecks and haunted stations. :eek: Its part of railroading lore. :D Not only that but,most old railroaders was highly superstitious.
The old Columbus,Hocking Valley & Toledo(Hocking Valley) had a 4-4-0 #89(nee 107) that was called a voodoo engine..You see this engine killed several engineers and some firemen in her short 19 year career.She would jump the track for no apparent reason or find other mischief to get into such as hitting cows or in one case sheep of course she would derail and roll over killing one of the crew members.My Great Grandfather was killed by this engine when she hit a flock of sheep outside of Logan so I been told by my Grandmother(his daughter).

Of course the HV was not without its ghost.
The story goes that a station agent was killed when he slip and fell in front of a passenger train on a rainy night back in 1885 or 86..It was told that his ghost could be seen on rainy nights walking the station platform and would disappear at the spot where he slip and fell.. :eek:
 
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