An old, wrecked train in a remote United States river where no accident ever occurred

When I publish an article, I usually spend more time researching than writing, and sometimes I come across surprising stories.

The impressive ruins of the Paranapiacaba funicular, in the southeast of São Paulo
The wine and beer train cars derailed and abandoned since 1965 in Carrizo Gorge

A week ago, the YouTube channel Mountain West Productions posted an interesting video exploring what appear to be the wreckage of a train crash. The video's creator discovered the old train one night while browsing Google Earth. The most curious aspect is that, according to the creator, there are no tracks leading to the site and no access roads—just a locomotive and three railcars that must have fallen from a great height:

The author notes that there was an old track leading to that location, known as the Timberline Spur. What makes the case intriguing is that, as Mountain West Productions points out in the video description, there is no railway bridge there, nor is there any track leading to the site. What he believed might be a logging train was situated in the middle of a dense, virgin forest, more than 30 kilometers from the nearest logging camp. The images shown here are stills from that video. This is the lush forest where the train is located.

Although the author doesn't mention it, that train is abandoned in a river in Washington State, in the northwestern United States. I looked for information on train accidents in the area, and surprisingly, I found nothing. In the United States, a train accident of this magnitude would leave a trace in the press, yet there is nothing. Judging by the available information, no train accident occurred there. So, how did that train end up there?

Here you can see the river canyon where that wrecked train lies. The site is very difficult to reach, even on foot.

Here we can see one of the passenger cars abandoned at the site. This is another striking detail: given that it was a passenger train, it is more likely that a record of the event would have appeared in the press than if the accident had involved a logging train.

In this image, we can see the locomotive upside down on the riverbed. It was an old steam locomotive. Obviously, that train didn't end up there due to some paranormal phenomenon. The website Ropewiki.com sheds light on what happened: what we see are the remains from the filming of the movie "Ring of Fire" (1961), directed by Andrew L. Stone. The final scene was shot in a narrow gorge above the Wynoochee River—the very river seen in the images:

"In a dramatic proof of gravity, a 60-ton steam locomotive and two passenger cars made a sudden and rather terminal descent to crash into the river below. After the filming, efforts were made clean up the area, but, apparently, the river was too deep and the train too heavy to remove. So... they're still there. The engine lies upside-down, mostly underwater."

Five years ago, Cameron Scance posted that scene from the movie:

I find it outrageous that they did that instead of using a miniature, and then left the wreckage of the train there. But then again, the U.S. film industry has sometimes resorted to truly crazy measures to lend realism to certain scenes. This is a clear example. According to tracingthefjord.com, the locomotive destroyed in that movie was from 1924, and the passenger cars belonged to Southern Pacific.

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Images: Mountain West Productions.