A 1936 mercury streamline and a cow named Bessie did not meet during a New York railroad collision as suggested in photos and posts posted on social media. Reuters found the origin of the story in satire.
Examples of the social media posts can be seen here and here.
A user posted the original photo of the Mercury engine here on Tumblr. These trains were indeed introduced in New York in the 1930s: on several websites and blogs, there is a Mercury train engine in the Tumblr post (here, here, here). Old footage of the locomotive can be seen here.
Things got interesting when fellow users of Tumblr.com, facts-I-just-made-up, wrote and published a story in a tumbling thread after another commentator expressed interest in using the terminated trains again.
(here).
Tumblr-user-facts-I-just-made-up, whose real name is Ari Bach, is an author (here). Bach told Reuters in a series of messages via Tumblr: “I made it up.”
The story that appears in these reports describes the image of ‘three skull-like skulls with phallic lobe skull’ and the ‘bladder jaws’ of a train designed to usher in the Apocalypse. In the story of a social media user, the world was spared the sacrificial death of a cow named Bessie in New York State. When the cow was hit by the train, the impact tore the metal covering, exposing the carnivorous skulls, making the trains a true knowledge of the public (here).
The author also told Reuters he was surprised by the continued popularity of the post online.
Bach was inspired to write his satirical message on social media through the RH Giger train design hrgiger.com/ghost/ghost4.jpg of the 1995 science thriller Species seen here.
While some users understand the implied satire of the story, Ari Bach wanted fellow users to know that his message is a reminder to explore the online sources of facts. “It’s meant to be in good humor.”
The photo in these reports shows the 1936 Mercury Streamliner, a train designed by Henry Dreyfuss (here) and not Hans Richard Giger, as stated in the satirical report by Ari Bach.
VERDICT
Untrue. The picture and the attached story posted on social media have its origins in a satirical Tumblr thread.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.