I honestly never even considered that this could happen, but the power that it must take to do this must be incredible.
I honestly never even considered that this could happen, but the power that it must take to do this must be incredible.
I like going to country fairs, but I don't go anywhere near the steam tractors.
Steam is still one of the most powerful things we have.
Boiler explosions can scatter parts thousands of feet away, they usually end up killing the fireman and engineer as well.
Gettysburg Railroad had a boiler failure on their Canadian Pacific 4-6-2 #1278 in 1995. It wasn't a true "Blow the boiler off the frame" failure, but it melted the crownsheet, dumped the boiler water into the firebox and then blew the steam out the firebox door and scaled the engineer and fireman. Everyone survived but the engineer in particular was pretty badly burned. Gettysburg Railroad was notoriously sketchy, poor maintenance and suspect operating procedures (one visitor vividly recalls a trip where the owner had his 10 year old daughter operating as the fireman!) and it eventually caught up with them. The only saving grace was that the Canadians designed their firebox differently, it was a much better design that much better prevented a true boiler explosion. It did cause a mass panic overnight, with everyone thinking that steam locomotives were going to be parked permanently.
Boiler explosions were common accidents on river steamboats too. Imagine that happening on a wood boat in the middle of a large river in the winter. Loss of life could be huge.
In reply to Woody :
There was one that exploded at our country fairgrounds a couple weeks before we moved in. The police had stopped him for driving on the street with the steel tires, and while they were talking to him, it went off.
RossD said:A different type of boiler explosion. PDF but with good pictures.
Good god. That had to be exciting. I'm also reminded of the classic Mythbusters hot water heater failure
Added to the list of things that I never want to witness firsthand.
Woody said:I like going to country fairs, but I don't go anywhere near the steam tractors.
A couple people got killed here about 10 years ago from a steam tractor engine demonstration explosion
It may or may not be the one xlr99 is referring to.
Patrick said:Woody said:I like going to country fairs, but I don't go anywhere near the steam tractors.
A couple people got killed here about 10 years ago from a steam tractor engine demonstration explosion
It may or may not be the one xlr99 is referring to.
That's the scary thing about steam tractors. There aren't any real regulations on those. Locomotives are subject to FRA regulations and inspections. Every 1472 days of operation or 15 years, they have to get torn down and inspected and they do not go back together again and operate unless the FRA says it is safe. You can still have a freak metallurgy failure or operator failure, but its much, much rare. Meanwhile, steam tractors can have thin fireboxes or leaky flues or brittle boiler plates from being 100+ years old and being operated by a farmer who didn't blown down the boiler or used poor quality water and no one knows until they blow up.
Looks like a spaghetti monster
Mndsm said:Looks like a spaghetti monster
When you accidentally summon Cthulu while crossing Cajon Pass
I remember a novel where one character's father was a train engineer who died in a railroad accident, and classmates teased him about his steam-broiled father being served as hot dogs in the school cafeteria.
Steam locomotive accidents were gruesome.
As someone who's melted skin off his wrist when a radiator cap blew off, I can confirm the gruesome.
An interesting anecdote from the East Broad Top Railroad, when they nearly had a boiler explosion the #17 due to plugged injectors (inectors use steam pressure to blow water into the boiler).
"There have been terrifying moments, too. Years ago, an engineer brought No. 17 and its train all the way back from the far end of the line with neither injector working, and the intervening decades have done nothing to dull Hall’s anger.
“When that injector doesn’t come on the second time, your brain ought to go in gear and you ought to pull the fire where you are. You don’t keep pulling your injector and getting it hotter and hotter and blowing your water away. You’re not taking any in, you’re blowing it away.
“I cut the lever on the coaches right here in front of the station, while the train was moving and I was screaming at the top of my lungs,” Hall says. He climbed in the cab and “headed for the ball field, and wouldn’t you know it, there was a county league having a ball game. I was going to blow a locomotive up with 400 kids there. We slammed it into reverse and I pulled it up over by those stone abutments that they uncovered when they took the [coal refuse]. Elmer Barnett and I pulled the fire. It seemed like it took two hours, but we pulled it in two minutes. Literally dumped her out.”
That could have been really ugly.
The mill dad worked at in the 80s had a boiler blow. He spent 26 days in icu.
Dont berkeley with physics and safety.
You'll need to log in to post.
