The bottom of Lake Superior is littered with shipwrecks and, apparently, a train that derailed near Schreiber, Ontario, more than 100 years ago.
The train was discovered at the end of July by Tom Crossman, an underwater recovery expert based in Minnesota.
According to reports, the train flew off the tracks after hitting a boulder not far from Mink Harbour in June 1910. It plunged a total of 80 metres down the side of a cliff to the bottom of Lake Superior, and hadn’t been seen until earlier this summer.
“I think all of us on the boat were pretty blown away,” Crossman told CBC News. “To think that we were the first people in 106 years to see something that hasn’t been seen. It’s pretty impressive, that feeling.”
They located the century-old locomotive with the help of a diver named Terry Irvine, who found two of the train’s boxcars in 2014. He gave the cars’ GPS coordinates to Crossman, who used that information alongside a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to find the train tucked between some boulders, not far from the boxcars Irvine had spotted.
Crossman told reporters that the train is too damaged to be lifted out of the water in its entirety, but they may remove individual items with permission from the government.