Amateurs Eager but Untrained

--About 200 volunteers accompanied the author of “Raise the Titanic” in an attempt to retrieve another lost vehicle--a Kansas Pacific locomotive believed to have been buried near Bennett, Colo., in a flood on May 21, 1878. Clive Cussler, through his National Underwater and Marine Agency, has found 54 sunken vessels, including a dirigible, but never a train. And he wasn’t optimistic. “If I had five guys with magnetometers and lined them up, we’d find it,” he said, but the large search party was “too unwieldy.” Some of the volunteers, such as Curtis Hotzinger and his wife, Mary Fedoruk, said they joined the search because they are Cussler fans. The locomotive, 19 of its 25 cars and a caboose were reported to have fallen 30 feet from a railroad bridge during a deluge 30 miles east of Denver, killing three railroad workers and leaving the locomotive and 12 of the cars buried in the sand. Old newspaper accounts say a man named Wolfe Londoner reported finding the buried engine about two weeks after the accident, some distance downriver from the bridge, but no recovery of the locomotive is mentioned.

--The Commerce Department handed out plaques and hats to individuals, businesses and government bodies that cooperated in the massive October effort to rescue whales trapped by ice off the coast of Alaska, an operation coordinated by the department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Commerce Secretary C. William Verity Jr. and Soviet Ambassador Yuri V. Dubinin also handed out liberal helpings of praise for the cooperation between the two superpowers. Dubinin said that “this type of icebreaker diplomacy is useful for all relationships between the Soviet Union and the United States and for the whole world.” One of the three trapped gray whales died, but the others apparently swam to freedom after nearly two weeks of rescue efforts. Among the individuals honored were Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and the crews of the two Soviet icebreakers that provided assistance.

--In a new Gallup Poll, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ranks at the top of the 10 women most admired by Americans. Second on the list is Mother Teresa, and third is First Lady Nancy Reagan. Those three have been among the top four on the list every year since 1981, although not always in the same order. The rest of the list for 1988: talk show host Oprah Winfrey, former First Lady Betty Ford, reporter Barbara Walters, Philippine President Corazon Aquino, former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, actress Elizabeth Taylor and First Lady-to-be Barbara Bush.