Why does the "Al Capone's Vault" report on TV many year ago come to mind? Of course this situation is a lot more complex, with more government involvement. Once the permission is granted to do some intrusive testing, how much are the treasure hunters and/or goverment authorities prepared to spend to see what, if anything is there?

They should do a careful and calculated archeological dig.
You might find something else of historical interest. The authorities should be there, if anything is picked and found it can be secured, marked, photographed, archived, placed in a secure vault, for testing/checking/ownership returning if need be or move to museum display or whatever.

I don't care if some scientist thinks "Nothing is there" you have to go there and look.
These guys may have probed and probed with their radar and believe they hit something.

Here is a long article that sheds a lot of light on the history of the area under scrutiny for the Nazi Gold Train search. The area has an interesting context that I was not aware of. It is a treasure hunting context related to the constant search for the treasures that were stashed when the population of 2-million Germans was driven out of this area in 1947.

There is also a reference to last year’s search by scientists who proclaimed that no buried train was there. It says they used an infrared imaging system that found some anomalies, but no train. How does infrared imaging work for finding buried objects? Does it penetrate the ground with infrared energy? Is this the preferred tool for locating large metal objects buried 20-40 feet deep in soil?

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/ ... -nazi-gold

The train story showed up in the May 9, 2016 New Yorker. Even included somebody who had built a scale model of it in his garage! The article eventually said that there train is not there, but quite a bit of stuff was indeed in the labyrinth of tunnels.

Has anyone read Joanna Lamparska's book “Gold Train: A Short History of Madness" mrntioned in the article?

I had to chuckle at the 'make some T-shirts and do some business' line...

How do you build a scale mode of a train you've never seen other than in bad-resolution radar images that might not even be of a train?

It's a scale model of one of the German armored trains -- which are well known.

Okay, but nobody has a clue if that is what's actually in there...

As I understand it, the treasure hunters have said they would pay for the excavation to verify what they found with radar.

Obviously, there is something else at work here besides the challenge of finding the treasure. It is like we have this closed door with some belief that there is a treasure behind it. But we can’t open that door to find out until we know for sure that the treasure is there.

In the New Yorker Magazine article, it says that the expert scientists used a thermal imaging camera to prove that nothing is there. Doesn’t thermal imaging require a heat signature or a difference of temperature between the object of the search and its background? If so, how can such a temperature difference exist at the site?

Yes, infrared testing does depend on some temperature difference to detect anything. And at the depths in question, it is highly unlikely anything would show up.

As mentioned, they did spot some anomalies. that could be the difference between the air temperature in the tunnel and the surrounding rock or soil. Even if the IR testing was successful in detecting a tunnel, a train- or truck, or any other object, might be totally invisible to it if it was at the ambient temperature of its environment- which, after all those years, should be expected.

The article didn't say whether the scientists also used GPR (which at those depths is highly dependent on groundwater and soil moisture conditions at the time of the test) or other methods such as a magnetometer (very problematic at those depths, and potentially impossible due to minerals that could be present).

Other news reports have mentioned that the "finders" should have permission soon, and that digging is expected to begin soon. Apparently, they are convinced enough to fund the dig themselves. This is exactly what should be done if they wish to prove their claims.

I do not have any experience with GPR, but I have been told that it does not work in saturated soil, as you say. I was interested in using it to look into a lake bottom consisting of saturated peat. The people who rent that equipment told me that the conditions would make it impossible to image anything.

However, I have recently talked to a geologist who is well versed in detection methods. He told me that there are qualifications to the statements about water saturation, and that some variations can allow effective imaging in water-saturated soil. In any case, the site of the lost Nazi gold train search appears to be fairly high in relation to cut down areas around it, so there is at least a fair chance that soil saturation will not inhibit GPR there.

I am quite familiar with magnetometer searching in concept and somewhat in practice. I would say that a buried train 40-50 deep would be an extraordinarily easy target for magnetometer detection. Mineralization of soil could be problematic if it contains sufficient iron, but that may not be the case at all. The only other possible problem would be the existence of large amounts of trash or tramp iron at the site. That may not be an issue at all.

One thing working in favor of magnetometer searching is the fact that the target is known to be a train that was parked there. Therefore, we know the target will be a regular feature, much longer than its width, and at a constant depth. Anticipating the target is an important part of magnetometer searching.

Apparently digging is underway:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05 ... -for-trea/

http://www.news.com.au/technology/scien ... d13ba78829

Steve Hunter

One more time...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wor ... in-poland/

It should not take long to drill into the bank. With luck, they will break through into a void. The landscape does seem to suggest the possibility of a diverging railroad cut having been filled in and then having settled a bit over time.

Hi,

Even if there is no gold, I hope they find some historical artifacts from WWII.

Good luck.

Doug vV