Was driving around rural Missouri today and saw this apparition sticking out of the ground. Found out it has been here since 1955, buried until just recently when a flood last fall washed away the topsoil. Grass has since regrown around it and I managed to get his picture before the property owner chased me off. Wish I knew what the engine number was.

Considering today's date, I'm not sure if this is a joke or not.

seriously? you're genuinely not sure?

I think the internet has ruined April Fools jokes, pretty much forever..
its just way too obvious now and way too "expected"..
no one can really be taken in by an April fools joke anymore, because the surprise is gone.
IMO, people should just stop trying..

Scot

Well, you could just not turn your computer on April 1st if it upsets you that much.
Nobody has a sense of humor anymore.

its not a question of having a sense of humor or not..
the issue is..they simply aren't funny..
after 15 years of fake April fools jokes on this forum (and on every railfan forum)
its just run its course..its just not funny anymore.
Its been debated for a few years now..
the majority agree with me:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29241

and that was two years ago..

Scot

This forum is one of the highlights of April Fools' Day for me. I love the cleverness and subtlety often displayed here. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I personally love it. :)

Don't let these nay-sayers get to you, I thought it was pretty clever. Maybe next year the rest of the locomotive will show up!

I didn't mean not sure about the whole engine being buried in Missouri. Just looking at the picture disproves that. I meant I wasn't sure about the stack being buried in Missouri, as that's a hell of a lot more plausible.

So what is the story behind this stack anyways?

Great! Now let's hang it over New York City by it's tail. (Oh, wait, that's too outrageous for even an April Fools Joke...)

That may be true in this forum, but it's certainly not true everywhere...

Take a look at my Google Plus profile, and pay attention to the second story, the one about the "rainbow owl". (A mythical photoshopped owl that looks like his daddy was a parrot.) I found the story on the net, added a comment aimed at photographers and let it fly, as owls often do.

https://plus.google.com/105646458226420473639/posts

The results?
Nearly 300 people shared it (re-posted the story to their own page).
It got over 350 comments on my page alone, who knows how many more on the shares.
Over 650 people clicked "like".
Based on the above, at least several thousand people read it, possibly far more.

So, the rumors of the death of internet April Fools Day pranks are greatly exaggerated.

The problem here is that they're such a huge tradition they're expected, the site gets so little traffic they don't blend in, and many of them are simply warmed over repeats of the last 5 years worth of jokes. (Just how many lost loco stories on 4/1 can you fall for in a row?)

I thought it was a clever photo posting.

Wesley

OK as Paul Harvey used to say, now for the rest of the story.
This is indeed a NYC Hudson stack. How our family ended up with it is a story in itself.
My Dad was a Frisco engineer out of St. Louis. In 1958, the Lindenwood Roundhouse was busy cosmetically restoring 1522 for donation to the Museum of Transport. The director at that time and founder "Doc" Roberts started making a long list of demands to the roundhouse foreman until the foreman mentioned to Dad he was on the verge of talking the Frisco out of donating. Dad, who knew Doc, sat down with Doc and agreed to act as a liason to keep the project moving and reduce friction.
After the 1522 arrived, a truck showed up at our house in Maplewood, MO and the driver said that Doc had sent this smokestack as a token of thanks. So in 1958 Dad and I strained to roll it into the back yard, bury it and make a planter out of it for Mom.
Fast forward to 1964 when I was in the Army in Germany my Dad was killed in an auto accident and I came home on emergency leave. Doc approached me at the funeral home and inquired as to when they could come get the stack. So back to the museum it went and until we restored 1522 was laying in the weeds against the fence rusting away since 1964. They were on a scrap drive at that time and were talking about selling it for scrap so I talked to the director, told the story and was told to reclaim it. at the time it still had the petticoat casting on the bottom which I cut off and used it again as a planter. We moved in '05 and it came with me. I recently placed it in our front yard and painted it again and the wife is going to plant pretties in it.
As for the April Fool thing, I've orbited around the sun enough years to where I don't give a rat's patoot if one or two people get their panties in a bunch once in a while. Just don't read my posts if they outrage you that much.
And now you know "The rest of the story".

Hmmm, I don't suppose that Doc sent a boiler to someone else, a tender to another person, some wheels to others...

One never knows about Doc.
I should have taped the stories a couple of the old timers who were around when the MOT started. They were very interesting to say the least.
I thought it was a class act to brace me at the funeral parlor when Dad was laid out like he did. You can imagine how I would have LIKED to react to the question.