A Nazi train rumoured to have gone missing near the end of World War II while carrying away gems and guns ahead of advancing Soviet forces has reportedly been found.

Local authorities in Poland’s south-western district of Walbrzych said they have been contacted by a law firm representing a Pole and a German who said they had located the missing train.

The pair were seeking to cash in on their find, attempting to claim 10 per cent of the value of the findings.

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“Lawyers, the army, the police and the fire brigade are dealing with this,” official from the Walbrzych district council Marika Tokarska, said.

“The area has never been excavated before and we don’t know what we might find,” she said.

Local news reports said the train in question went missing in 1945, packed with loot from the-then eastern German city of Breslau – now called Wroclaw and part of Poland – as the Red Army closed in at the end of WWII.

One local media report said the train was armoured and belonged to the Wehrmacht – Nazi Germany’s military.

A Polish radio station cited local folklore as saying the train entered a tunnel near Ksiaz Castle in the mountainous Lower Silesian region and never emerged. According to that theory, the tunnel was later closed and its location long forgotten.

The station said the 150-metre-long train was carrying guns, “industrial equipment”, gems and other valuable treasure.

Ms Tokarska said she did not have any details on the location or the contents of the missing train.

Sceptics said there was no evidence that it ever existed, but a connoisseur of the region’s history told the station that a handful of people had already looked for the train, but nothing was ever found.

“But the legend has captured imaginations,” said Joanna Lamparska.

Trains were used to spirit Nazi loot back to Berlin as Allied and Soviet forces surged towards the German capital from the west and the east respectively in the winter and spring of 1945.

In the case of the so-called “Gold Train”, Nazi forces sent 24 freight carriages from Budapest towards Germany filled with family treasures including gold, silver and valuable paintings seized from Hungarian Jews and estimated to be worth up to $200 million.

The train was intercepted by US soldiers who, according to a later US investigation, helped themselves to some of the loot.