don't listen to the news reports and the opinionated ways they can be. They can generate a lot of brehaha thats only a lot of hot air. These guys doing the dig are going at it with care.
It sounds like they need to know exactly how where and which way they are digging and not to disrupt things. If they find a tunnel they may want to know if its not going to collapse, if it need reinforcement, or whatever. They wouldnt want to be on a dig and suddenly the earth gives way swallowing people/equipment whatever.

They have evidence something is there, train or no train, lets go find out, it could fill some history holes.

I'm starting to be reminded of the story with the punch line "the boy digs frantically, saying 'If there's all that [manure] here, there's GOTTA be a pony in here somewhere!'"

How much digging has to happen before you concede the only thing inside Al Capone's vault is dirt and an old beer bottle?

As I said previously, we have not been not told anything about the reasoning, science, and method of the search project. I know that the media hates anything technical, yet they blurted out endlessly about how the legend was a hoax in complete deference to the “scientists” who found no indication of buried objects last year.

This is what I am getting at: I assume they are digging where their ground penetrating radar showed the fantastic anomalies. Yet they are finding nothing but relatively consistent soil with nothing that would produce the anomalies.

I am familiar with magnetometer searching. If a magnetometer finds an anomaly of a certain shape and intensity, it may be a locomotive. It may also be something else made of iron with about the same mass as a locomotive. So a part of mag searches is that you have to factor the probability of the existence of whatever masses of ferric material could be producing the anomaly. Ultimately, you have to dig up the anomaly to confirm what object is causing it.

But here is the fundamental truth with mag surveys: If they produce no anomaly, there cannot possibly be a locomotive buried there.

To a magnetometer, a buried locomotive is an “elephant in the living room.” It was reported that magnetometers were used to search this gold train sight, but nothing was said about what they found. If there was a train buried there, a magnetometer would have found massive and complex anomalies. And if no magnetic anomalies were found with a magnetometer, there could not possibly be a train buried there.

Ground penetrating radar is different than magnetometer searching. GPR has the potential to reveal something more like an actual image because it is a reflection of the buried object. Whereas a magnetometer only detects the distortion of the earth’s magnetic field caused by the magnetic field induced in the object by the earth’s magnetic field. The buried ferric-based object causes an “anomaly” in the natural magnetic field produced by the earth.

What I don’t know is whether a GPR search could produce a complex image resembling a line of military tanks on railroad flat cars, with that detected image actually resulting from something vague and invisible such as mere variations in the chemistry of the soil. If that is possible; and if their magnetometer search produced no anomalies at all (which must be the case), then it appears that the dig was founded on nothing but hope.

But if GPR could not have produced the fantastic imagery without there being very prominent and tangible buried objects there, then why have they failed to find the objects?

There is one thing that could explain this conundrum. That is that they have not dug deep enough. They have talked about the target depth of their excavations, which I recall as being around 30 feet. Why assume that the searched object lies within 30 feet?

That would appear to be about level with the elevation of the railroad there. It would make sense that a spur off the railroad would run at the same elevation of the main line track, but there is no guarantee of that. Hiding an armored train would not be a typical purpose for a spur, so the spur may not have been typical. The spur may have descended as it departed from the main line. It may, for instance, lie 30 feet lower than the main line; or maybe 20 feet lower. The searchers might stop digging only five feet from breaking through into the tunnel.

But all this goes back to the technical results of the instrument surveys. You don’t just dig blindly with heavy equipment, based on hunches and faith. Both magnetometers and GPR produce massive data bases that can then processed and displayed in a variety of ways. Experts evaluate this data and can interpret the meaning to various extents. One of those interpretations is the depth of the object that is revealed by the search.

Well the search has been declared a failure. But what was it that failed? It seems to me that the failure lies in the instrument data that was said to detect significant anomalies at the site. I can see five possible explanations for that as follows:

1) The data is flawed from the search technique or equipment malfunction.

2) The data was processed, resulting in an unintentional change of its graphic presentation.

3) The data was processed, resulting in an intentional change of its graphic presentation to provide a more concrete and convincing appearance to bolster the claim of representing the lost train.

4) The data presented was is not data at all, but rather, a graphic art production intended to mimic Ground Penetrating Radar data, but with a more concrete and convincing appearance to bolster the claim of representing the lost train.

5) The objects or features depicted by the data lie below the 20 ft. deep excavations, and therefore have not been found in the digging.


So this is the one obvious question that needs to be answered:

How did the GPR search produce such a detailed data image when there is nothing buried at the site that would produce any data?

In my opinion, the most likely answer is either item #4 or #5 above. The treasure hunters could confirm or deny item #4. They could also explain why they chose to dig no deeper than 20 feet.

Du-u-u-u-de....................

I've gone through this [BLEEP] repeatedly for decades every time a sonar sweep of Loch Ness reveals not only no breeding population of "monsters," not only no singular "monster" that has to forcibly rewrite all known biology just by surviving without reproducing for who knows how long, but not even enough aquatic life in the loch to sustainably feed such a creature:

Every imaginable rationalization save for the "does not exist" one.

Get back to me when you find a train or gold bar. Until then, I'm outta here.

6) There is nothing there.

Oh sure, the train may not exist. I thought that goes without saying. My point is about the fantastic image they showed to the world. I think a few questions about that are in order at this point. The lack of a train does not explain the incredible anomalies claimed to have been produced by the GPR at the site.

Apparently it is not just that the train does not exist. It is that nothing exists. If that is the case, the fantastic image has to be a serious mistake or an intentional fraud.

Hi,

Sadly, too much faith is put into the honesty of news reports. Look how the BIG news companies kept beating the Y2K computer problems to drum up viewership. The non-happening of the Y2K computer crash is an appropriate example.

There are nuggets of truth in them but they have to be dug out. Same for this Nazi WWII train.

There is too much wanting immediate results and not enough patience.

Oh Well.

Doug vV

people were buying up water and goods for the Y2k..yep, what an overblown non-event.

These guys are on an adventure, you don't know how things end up, the search is still on there may be anything else in hiding from all the Hitler craziness

The entire news focus has been on the valuable treasure and whether the treasure seekers will strike it rich or will be shot down with a “Gotcha!” The news media and most of its recipients are invested in the Gotcha, and they got a double dose of it in this Nazi gold train story.

First the scientists found nothing with their instruments, and then the treasure hunters found nothing with their digging. It must be humiliating for the treasure hunters to find nothing as they challenged the results of the scientists finding nothing.

So if the treasure hunters “stylized” their GPR data in order to make it more convincing in seeking permission to dig, they had to realize how risky that was. If the real data was so vague as to possibly be only background conditions, the digging was only based on a hunch and hope. Data not convincing enough to get permission to dig is one thing. Digging without convincing data is another thing.

I started to become skeptical of the treasure hunters last year when the scientists found no train. But that was not why I became skeptical. You will recall that in tandem with the scientists’ search, the treasure hunters would also do a final search. This seemed perfectly fair to have both contending parties do searches for a final comparison.

What made me skeptical was that the treasure hunters said absolutely nothing in the news about the results of their final search. After seeing their earlier GPR results, I would have expected the treasure hunters to redouble their effort to produce even more convincing results in their final search. Yet they presented nothing. At that point, nothing made sense.

I have tried to find more background on this story, but the searches are crowded with the singular focus on striking it rich or not. Here is a link to commentary about the search results: http://www.livescience.com/55780-search ... sumes.html

Quote from the link:

“Pollard noted that he was especially skeptical about Koper and Richter's radar images, which purported to show the underground train in great detail. "I've worked with ground-penetrating radar experts, and these are like no results that I've ever seen," he said, adding that radar images of buried archaeological features typically look more abstract.”

If you click on the two links in the above paragraphs, they will show the radar images from the Nazi gold train hunters, and the more abstract radar image that is considered more typical.

Quote from the link to the treasure hunters’ radar images:

“Alternately, it’s very possible that this is all part of a rather elaborate scam. Dr. Jerzy Ziętek, who works out of the Polish Academy of Mining, told Gazeta Wroclawksa that he’s made thousands of GPR readings, and none appear like the one in the image, adding that “the sections indicated as cannons have a different resolution to the other sections.” In his opinion, this is a hoax.”

The belief that this was a hoax seems to be quite popular. But if was a hoax, what would be the point? Maybe it is a hoax without any rational point. If there was a hoax, the joke was on the treasure hunters. Maybe they had a third party process their GPR data, and that party cooked up the cartoon-like images as a joke on the treasure hunters, and the treasure hunters are not knowledgeable enough to know that.

from Carl Sagens Cosmos...you look at Venus..you see clouds so you guess because it has clouds it must have rain, because it has rain there must be trees, because it has trees it must have life...

What did you see...-clouds-

Only when they dropped some probes on Venus did we find the truth.


Everybody is jumping to conclusions here, these guys are still on the dig hunt.

Hi,

Excellent example. Thank you.

Doug vV

This article sheds some light on things:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/world ... .html?_r=0

I am starting to see that even if no train is found, there is great monetary return in commercializing the search as a theatrical tourist attraction. In that context, it makes no difference if a given search fails to find the legendary train. It just opens the door for another search with even greater drama to draw in the hordes of curious spectators. It is a brilliant way to market the local legend which is further supported by all of the documented history of tunnels and underground secrecy.

Furthermore, when you look at it this way, there is no risk of embarrassment for failure. On the contrary, it makes a better show. All of this would explain why a ground penetrating radar search image might be graphically exaggerated, or even mocked up without any data.

The article says the GPR had suggested a tunnel, which upon excavation, proved to be only a ridge of loam produced by the glacier. I can see how a ridge of soil-change might appear to be a tunnel, but what about the string of military tanks on railroad flat cars? How did that get into the image of nothing but a ridge of loam?

See also "Monster, Loch Ness".

It's likely not coincidence that the couple that supposedly first saw the "monster" in contemporary times and started the whole legend going again, supposedly bounding across the road with a sheep in its mouth, owned a hotel in the lakeside village of Drumnadrochit........... during the middle of an economic depression......... jes' sayin'.

They have a few clues, from the deathbed admission, from some radar searches.

I don't think they are giving up since they want more tests. But they plan to build a museum on the site and tell the story train or no train I bet and go.

I don't think they will be done on their search however.