From Wayne Jackson

!cid_image001_jpg@01C86A2F, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. Evington's Lost Locomotive (wreck site of the "Gorilla Train") Pictured above is the decades-old locomotive engine which sits rusting in the dense overgrowth beside an old railroad bed near Evington, Virginia. The locomotive has been there since the night of February 5, 1952, the night of the wreck of what became locally-known as the "Gorilla Train." That night, a broken rail derailed the northbound Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey circus train, a train whose next normal stop would have been Lynchburg for the circus scheduled there the following weekend. Along with the normal consist of circus animals, the train was carrying over fifty gorillas who were part of a special trapeze act. Several of the gorillas (and other animals) perished in the accident, but thirty-five gorillas escaped from their wrecked cars into the woods near Evington, and into the annals of local legend. Despite numerous repeated attempts to snare individual gorillas, officials had no success in capturing any of them, and the gorillas soon gained infamy with their reign of mischief throughout Campbell County. There are too many stories to list here, but their antics included harassing dogs, cattle and horses, stealing vegetables from gardens, peeking through windows at night, swinging from trees onto roofs (and in some cases, relieving themselves while there) and making a general nuisance of themselves. Some residents reported incidents of being awakened by gorillas "howling" as the sun rose. In one bizarre incident, a gorilla reportedly climbed into an unattended, running pickup truck and released the hand-brake, causing the truck to roll down a driveway and crash into a tool shed. Gorilla sightings in the area continued for nearly three decades, dwindling to only a few per year by the late 1970's. The last reported sighting was in 1981.