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Seeking Access To An Underground Railroad's History

Posted by: Nate Berg

17 February 2009 - 5:00am

A man who has been leading tours of abandoned underground railroads in New York City is hoping to gain permission to break through a 19th century brick wall below the streets to find a perfectly preserved locomotive from the mid-1800s.

"Thanks to Bob Diamond, the man who rediscovered a 19th-century Atlantic Avenue train tunnel in Downtown Brooklyn, you can scurry down a certain manhole without being hauled away by your ankles by the authorities.

Since his big reveal in 1980, Mr. Diamond, the 49-year-old founder of the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association, has been conducting tunnel tours via the manhole with the blessing of the D.O.T. But of late, Mr. Diamond has been pushing for another potential urban architectural “get.”

Behind a wall in the tunnel, near Atlantic Avenue and Hicks Street, he believes, there is a steam locomotive lying on its side like an abandoned toy train, in “pristine condition, a virtual time capsule.” And he wants to dig it up."

Full Story: The Tunnel Rats of Atlantic Avenue
Source: The New York Times, February 13, 2009
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