106 years after tragic crash, locomotive located in Lake Superior | Hacker News Reader

106 years after tragic crash, locomotive located in Lake Superior

duluthnewstribune.com

57 pointswglb17 comments

Perhaps the most tortured and obscure opening paragraph I've ever read in a newspaper:

Guided not just by the hands of operator Tom Crossmon, but also by the past efforts of an extended network of divers and the collective memory of a community, the remotely-operated vehicle descended into the depths of Lake Superior.

There are some pretty bad ones here [1]. And also a few gems [2].

> One warm spring night in 2011, a young man named Travis Hughes stood on the back deck of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house at Marshall University, in West Virginia, and was struck by what seemed to him—under the influence of powerful inebriants, not least among them the clear ether of youth itself—to be an excellent idea: he would shove a bottle rocket up his ass and blast it into the sweet night air. And perhaps it was an excellent idea. What was not an excellent idea, however, was to misjudge the relative tightness of a 20-year-old sphincter and the propulsive reliability of a 20-cent bottle rocket. What followed ignition was not the bright report of a successful blastoff, but the muffled thud of fire in the hole. -- Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic

[1] http://www.poynter.org/2014/and-now-for-some-really-bad-lede...

[2] http://www.poynter.org/2014/gallery-of-good-ledes-recommenda...

That ... is perhaps the best opening paragraph I've ever read in a journalistic publication.

That's practically a Bulwer-Lytton entry on its own. Spectacular.

How is it obscure? It's easy to read and vividly says what it means.

The amazing thing about wrecks in Lake Superior is that they are incredibly well preserved and free of corrosion. The lake is fresh water, and is only a few degrees above freezing in most places all year long. Corrosion moves very slowly.

Full dry-suit diving, though, if you go to see them yourself.

Why can I not highlight the txt? I can't be the only one who likes to highlight as they read. If it's to stop copying they should have disabled double click and ctrl+a.

You could try disabling JavaScript. Selection works for me.

I hate when sites do this. Also when they ask you to share the text you're highlighting (looking at you with a shaking fist, Medium!). No, I just didn't want to lose my place when I get interrupted in a few minutes, but now I have to figure out how to click out to make the giant share modal go away, thanks.

Can highlight with both mouse and ctrl-A here (on FF), no script blockers in play.

>Why can I not highlight the txt?

Running NoScript in default deny all javascript mode I am able to highlight the text with the mouse (although I do not do so while reading, so I had to go test to verify before posting).

Hmmm... the black and white opening sequence in the accompanying video appears to be a model of the train in question... like an HO scale thing or so, as opposed to actual historical "before" photos. I don't recall seeing a presentation like that in something like this.

Very likely an HO model. I had that engine or a similar one as a kid.

The other video linked at the bottom of the article[1] shows a historical photo of #722 which was the same model locomotive.

[1] https://vimeo.com/176065209

Additional photos of the dives: https://m.facebook.com/townshipofschreiber/posts/10153887671...

GUE Quest magazine article about the history and the dives (pay wall): https://www.gue.com/quest-vol-16-no-3

Now what? With enough money and effort, they could pull the locomotive up, an option discussed in the article. But why?

The locomotive was a Canadian Pacific D10. About 500 were built, 9 survive in museums, and three are maybe in running condition. Exporail near Montreal has one on display. The South Simcoe Railway in Ontario runs theirs. So it's not something lost to history.

As someone who lives in Duluth, this is not surprising at all. It's a magnificent sight when Lake Superior freezes over and you are able to walk/drive over it.

I'm accustomed to seeing underwater footage of boat and plane wrecks, slowly eaten away by the years. Seeing a... locomotive... in that state is strange.

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