RailRoadFan.com

Shown last night on the History Channel, it has a similar theme that the "Curse of Oak Island" series had. It starts at Muskegeon and follows the guys searchig for little known train tracks that supposedly a stolen Confederate engine with a load of gold came up from Florida in 1870. The tale then tells of the car being loaded to cross lake Michigan but was pushed overboard a few miles out and believed to be still there. The story makes for some interesting entertainment at this point but lacks any reason to search for the tracks or a sunken engine when the Muskegeon Elks Club shows them old photos of the tracks and partially sunken engine just off the beach they own.
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Show is scheduled for Tuesday nights at 10:00 pm EDT.
Epidodes 1 and 2 are on YouTube if you can stand all the commercials they stuff in there.

I think they are still showing the parts where they are trying to convince Marty Lagina to join them. The tracks and engine are supposed to offer support to their theory

Railroads in the south were largely 5' gauge and did not convert to 4' 8-1/2" until the mid-1880's. This was the age of reloading freight from one carriers box car to another vs. interchanging freight cars. If you had $2,000,000 in gold in the 1870's would you let it leave your sight and hope it showed up at the other end? Or would you and a few of your military comrades load it in a wagon or two and take it home under guard?

He theorizes they were shipping it west to "launder" it in the gold rush. Why then would it be going across lake Michigan? The Northern pacific didn't start construction until 1870 and the Great Northern didn't reach Washington state until the 1880's. So if you were going to California it would have been Union Pacific. But why ship it to California? Melt it, cast it into bars that don't say CSA. There would be way easier and less risky ways to launder money in 1870 than shipping your fortune to California then shipping it back.

Is there really a Confederate steam locomotive buried in Muskegon? Or is History Channel just pulling our legs?

My brother stopped over today and asked if I had heard about the civil war gold story and if it was brought up on the board here. Showed him this thread
Watched the first of 6 episodes I see published so far, pretty decent. Will continue to watch at least the next 5.. unknown if more episodes are coming out.