Post by MCDemuth on Oct 3, 2017 1:45:40 GMT
Could the missing pages of John Wilkes Booth’s diary, really be buried in the Western end of the Atlantic Avenue subway tunnel which was abandoned in 1859?
Bob Diamond has very good reason to believe it is, and his research and documentation strongly supports it!
Bob Diamond discovered that the Long Island Railroad had built a tunnel beneath Atlantic Avenue back in 1844—part of a line connecting New York to Boston...
The tunnel was only open for about 15 years, and the last train ran in 1859, when the state banned railroads from operating in Brooklyn, and it was shut down.
The city paid to have the tunnel filled in 1861. The contract to close and fill in the tunnel was given to a greedy man named Electus Litchfield. Instead of filling in the entire tunnel, Electus filled in only the ends, capped the holes in the street, and paid someone off to say that it had been filled... Rumors had always persisted that the work was never done.
Diamond simply replies, “They used to say the tunnel didn’t exist.”
In 1981, Bob Diamond proved that the tunnel still exists until Atlantic Avenue.
Diamond descended into the dark cavern that had been untouched for about a century. He shined his light around the 137-year-old passage. It was huge, with an arched ceiling made of cobblestone. Larger, irregularly shaped stones formed the side walls. There were stray rocks, rail spikes and shards of a bootleg liquor bottle scattered on the dirt floor where the railroad tracks once ran. He wandered into the dark cavern.
After walking about 1,600 feet, he hit the four-story wall of rocky debris that he now believes conceals Booth’s diaries and the lost locomotive.
Diamond’s long-held belief that behind a wall of rocky sediment sealing off the westernmost 400 feet of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel are two Civil War treasures:
1.) An 1830s wood-burning steam locomotive, and...
2.) The lost pages of John Wilkes Booth’s diary...
which together, he believes, would prove the mayor and other top ranking New York City officials conspired to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
In 2007, he received a call from the DOT asking him to resume his tunnel tours. The city issued him a new permit, and he reunited with an old BHRA partner and high school friend. They popped open the manhole.
National Geographic decided it would conduct a magnetometer test of what—if anything—was behind that wall... As the project progressed, however, National Geographic seemed to want as little to do with Diamond as possible... ...The National Geographic project had gone awry...
In late 2010, Diamond received that angry phone call and fax from the DOT telling him that his permission to enter the tunnel had been revoked. The letter offered no explanation, but enclosed with it was an assessment of the tunnel by the fire department, apparently based on photos from the BHRA’s website, claiming that the tunnel was a safety hazard, as it had only a single entrance.
PAGE 662
One night in December 2012, Diamond was up late. He was leafing through an eight-inch stack of more than 2,000 legal documents Salem had obtained by subpoenaing a consultant on the National Geographic project. He hoped to find some explanation for why National Geographic didn’t want him involved in its special about the tunnel. Around midnight, however, he reached Page 662, which had the results of a magnetometer study of the area behind the tunnel’s wall. “I didn’t know they did a study,” Diamond says, as he began to read the results: “One large subsurface metallic anomaly was identified extending across Atlantic Avenue and encompassing both the westbound and eastbound roadway.… ”
“I was floored,” Diamond says. “I read it about 10 times to make sure.” He then found an email, from the company that performed the magnetometer test to the PANYC consultant on the project, confirming what at this point he already knew: “There is no question that something(s) metallic is buried under Atlantic Ave.” “I was in a state of ecstasy,” he remembers. The next morning he telephoned Salem. “You know what, Gabe?” he said, laughing. “They found the locomotive down there!”
1865
Diamond takes an engineer’s pleasure in connecting the stray historical facts he uncovers about the tunnel. When he began his research, he gave little credence to the idea that the missing pages of John Wilkes Booth’s diary were behind its walls. Over the years, however, connections between O’Toole’s book and his tunnel research began to materialize. He found Brooklyn Eagle articles saying Booth traveled to New York frequently during the Civil War, and stayed in hotels, Diamond says, “that were well known for housing Confederate agents.” He points out that New York’s mayor at the time, Fernando Wood, wanted the city to secede from the Union, because much of New York’s Wall Street elite made their money in the cotton trade. Diamond has also found a report that two weeks before the assassination (OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN), the city paid a contractor $25 to repair a manhole on Atlantic Avenue. “I submit,” Diamond wrote in an essay on Booth, “this manhole was in fact located on Atlantic Avenue between Hicks Street and Columbia Street—in the section of tunnel now behind the wall.”
FUTURE:
Diamond and two colleagues were gathered around their regular table at Connecticut Muffin, discussing a new trolley line, for which the group has produced a 300-page report detailing how recent streetcar projects in the U.S. have yielded as much as a 2,000 percent return on investment and cost half as much as the average city bus to operate. If the proposal is accepted, the trolley would run under Atlantic Avenue, requiring the city to at last break through the wall at the end of Diamond’s tunnel.
Diamond is confident he will get back inside the tunnel, either through his lawsuit or the new trolley proposal. When I ask if he still thinks the lost diary pages of John Wilkes Booth are down there, he laughs and takes a sip of his coffee. “They used to say the locomotive didn’t exist,” he says.
SOURCES:
www.newsweek.com/2014/06/20/tunnel-vision-254202.html
www.jamesmaherphotography.com/new-york-historical-articles/atlantic-avenue-subway-tunnel/
They used to say, the tunnel didn't exist. Bob Diamond proved that it does.
They say, the locomotive doesn't exist. National Geographic's magnetometer test suggests otherwise...
If the locomotive is in fact there, then Bob Diamond would have a very good "Track" (Pun Intended) record going for him...
All of Bob's other documentation shows, that it is very possible, that the missing pages of John Wilkes Booth’s diary could be there too...
So, In my opinion, this doesn't sound like another Al Capone's Vault to me... and it sounds like another chapter in History is about to be discovered.
I wish Bob well in hopefully getting his answers, very soon.
Thoughts?
Bob Diamond has very good reason to believe it is, and his research and documentation strongly supports it!
Bob Diamond discovered that the Long Island Railroad had built a tunnel beneath Atlantic Avenue back in 1844—part of a line connecting New York to Boston...
The tunnel was only open for about 15 years, and the last train ran in 1859, when the state banned railroads from operating in Brooklyn, and it was shut down.
The city paid to have the tunnel filled in 1861. The contract to close and fill in the tunnel was given to a greedy man named Electus Litchfield. Instead of filling in the entire tunnel, Electus filled in only the ends, capped the holes in the street, and paid someone off to say that it had been filled... Rumors had always persisted that the work was never done.
Diamond simply replies, “They used to say the tunnel didn’t exist.”
In 1981, Bob Diamond proved that the tunnel still exists until Atlantic Avenue.
Diamond descended into the dark cavern that had been untouched for about a century. He shined his light around the 137-year-old passage. It was huge, with an arched ceiling made of cobblestone. Larger, irregularly shaped stones formed the side walls. There were stray rocks, rail spikes and shards of a bootleg liquor bottle scattered on the dirt floor where the railroad tracks once ran. He wandered into the dark cavern.
After walking about 1,600 feet, he hit the four-story wall of rocky debris that he now believes conceals Booth’s diaries and the lost locomotive.
Diamond’s long-held belief that behind a wall of rocky sediment sealing off the westernmost 400 feet of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel are two Civil War treasures:
1.) An 1830s wood-burning steam locomotive, and...
2.) The lost pages of John Wilkes Booth’s diary...
which together, he believes, would prove the mayor and other top ranking New York City officials conspired to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
In 2007, he received a call from the DOT asking him to resume his tunnel tours. The city issued him a new permit, and he reunited with an old BHRA partner and high school friend. They popped open the manhole.
National Geographic decided it would conduct a magnetometer test of what—if anything—was behind that wall... As the project progressed, however, National Geographic seemed to want as little to do with Diamond as possible... ...The National Geographic project had gone awry...
In late 2010, Diamond received that angry phone call and fax from the DOT telling him that his permission to enter the tunnel had been revoked. The letter offered no explanation, but enclosed with it was an assessment of the tunnel by the fire department, apparently based on photos from the BHRA’s website, claiming that the tunnel was a safety hazard, as it had only a single entrance.
PAGE 662
One night in December 2012, Diamond was up late. He was leafing through an eight-inch stack of more than 2,000 legal documents Salem had obtained by subpoenaing a consultant on the National Geographic project. He hoped to find some explanation for why National Geographic didn’t want him involved in its special about the tunnel. Around midnight, however, he reached Page 662, which had the results of a magnetometer study of the area behind the tunnel’s wall. “I didn’t know they did a study,” Diamond says, as he began to read the results: “One large subsurface metallic anomaly was identified extending across Atlantic Avenue and encompassing both the westbound and eastbound roadway.… ”
“I was floored,” Diamond says. “I read it about 10 times to make sure.” He then found an email, from the company that performed the magnetometer test to the PANYC consultant on the project, confirming what at this point he already knew: “There is no question that something(s) metallic is buried under Atlantic Ave.” “I was in a state of ecstasy,” he remembers. The next morning he telephoned Salem. “You know what, Gabe?” he said, laughing. “They found the locomotive down there!”
1865
Diamond takes an engineer’s pleasure in connecting the stray historical facts he uncovers about the tunnel. When he began his research, he gave little credence to the idea that the missing pages of John Wilkes Booth’s diary were behind its walls. Over the years, however, connections between O’Toole’s book and his tunnel research began to materialize. He found Brooklyn Eagle articles saying Booth traveled to New York frequently during the Civil War, and stayed in hotels, Diamond says, “that were well known for housing Confederate agents.” He points out that New York’s mayor at the time, Fernando Wood, wanted the city to secede from the Union, because much of New York’s Wall Street elite made their money in the cotton trade. Diamond has also found a report that two weeks before the assassination (OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN), the city paid a contractor $25 to repair a manhole on Atlantic Avenue. “I submit,” Diamond wrote in an essay on Booth, “this manhole was in fact located on Atlantic Avenue between Hicks Street and Columbia Street—in the section of tunnel now behind the wall.”
FUTURE:
Diamond and two colleagues were gathered around their regular table at Connecticut Muffin, discussing a new trolley line, for which the group has produced a 300-page report detailing how recent streetcar projects in the U.S. have yielded as much as a 2,000 percent return on investment and cost half as much as the average city bus to operate. If the proposal is accepted, the trolley would run under Atlantic Avenue, requiring the city to at last break through the wall at the end of Diamond’s tunnel.
Diamond is confident he will get back inside the tunnel, either through his lawsuit or the new trolley proposal. When I ask if he still thinks the lost diary pages of John Wilkes Booth are down there, he laughs and takes a sip of his coffee. “They used to say the locomotive didn’t exist,” he says.
SOURCES:
www.newsweek.com/2014/06/20/tunnel-vision-254202.html
www.jamesmaherphotography.com/new-york-historical-articles/atlantic-avenue-subway-tunnel/
They used to say, the tunnel didn't exist. Bob Diamond proved that it does.
They say, the locomotive doesn't exist. National Geographic's magnetometer test suggests otherwise...
If the locomotive is in fact there, then Bob Diamond would have a very good "Track" (Pun Intended) record going for him...
All of Bob's other documentation shows, that it is very possible, that the missing pages of John Wilkes Booth’s diary could be there too...
So, In my opinion, this doesn't sound like another Al Capone's Vault to me... and it sounds like another chapter in History is about to be discovered.
I wish Bob well in hopefully getting his answers, very soon.
Thoughts?
