Valley Railroads: Trestle Collapse! Letterbox Hybrid
New York Admin: I regret to report that the cache owner has not responded to the prior note about this disabled cache. I'm archiving it opening the area up to others.
Thanks,
New York Admin
Geocaching.com Volunteer Cache Reviewer
Valley Railroads: Trestle Collapse!
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A Letterbox Hybrid hidden along the Dutchess Rail Trail. There is a new parking lot on Diddell Road (coordinates given below), so no need to park on the corners.
This is part of a series that I intend to hide to commemorate the railroads that helped the Hudson Valley grow and prosper. Each one will focus on an individual company or events that are an important part of our local history. This will be a series of letterbox hybrids that will all have a handmade stamp to match the cache. Stamp your own log book and return the stamp and ink pad so that others may use it.
Along the sweeping corner where the trail crosses Diddell Road so close by, was the scene of a frightening, but non lethal train accident. In 1910, the Maybrook Line was expanding and doubling up the rails along this section. At Diddell Road, they decided to build up the rail bed and create a tunnel for automobile traffic to eliminate delays when the trains would stop at the nearby Diddell Station. A large wooden trestle was constructed over the road and a stone and cement tunnel created for cars to pass under. Locomotives would then bring open hopper cars full of stone and earth onto the trestle, where the load would be dumped from above to bury the tunnel and build up the approaches. Although it was a fairly standard practice, miscalculations sometimes occurred. On this site, a loaded car and locomotive exceeded the limits of the temporary trestle causing the timbers to break and a section of the trestle to collapse. The locomotive and hopper car came crashing down from over 20' above the ground. From my research, there were no fatalities which was very lucky considering the violence of the accident. If you stand by the nearby kiosk, you can see where the old rail bed existed. The trestle and tracks would have run ABOVE this level to allow the cars to dump their fill. From this point you can see how far below the road runs and imagine how lucky they were.
The cache itself is a .30cal. ammo can hidden along the Dutchess Rail Trail. This trail is well used, and the muggle factor is very high. This hide provides some cover, but is very near the parking lot, so please take notice of muggle traffic and be careful so it doesn’t go missing. The cache is hidden just off the trail but be sure to watch for some old, rusty fencing that is on the ground. After stamping your book, feel free to take one of the handmade tokens that will be in each of the caches for this series and will be specific to that cache. I’ll try to keep them stocked, so please take only one.
Other caches in this series:
Valley Railroads: Central New England Railway (GC1TRKB)
Valley Railroads: New Haven (GC1TRMN)
Valley Railroads: Penn Central (GC1TX8M)
Valley Railroads: New York O&W (GC2191D)
Valley Railroads: New York & Harlem (GC2TN43)
Valley Railroads: New York, New Haven & Hartford (GC2VDTV)
Hold up of the "Yonkers Sugar Special" (GC1X22A)
Valley Railroads: Derailment! (GC2X3BH)
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
N snyyra gerr...bar bs gurz ng yrnfg.
Treasures
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