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Joe Dockrill shared Heritage Railway Magazine's photo
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Of the 139 comments on this photo, the following was informative.
Jerzy Niemiec It's explosion of Chesapeake&Ohio T-1 #3020 near Chillicothe, on May 1943
A comment at the end of that posting by Jim Whalen corrects the date as May 12, 1948. He also provides more information: "It happened on Charleston Pike, just south of Chillicothe. The fireman, brakeman and engineer were all killed by scalding water" on the C&O Railroad.
(Update: in addition to this accident in 1948, the C&O had an Allegheny explode in 1953 after it passed the Hinton Tower.)
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Update:
At 1:58, the narrator says the tubes were what once carried heat through the water in the boiler. But I don't think we are looking at the fire tubes. I think we are looking at the superheater tubes that carried the steam through the fire tubes to make the steam even hotter.
A 13:04 video about the 1948 explosion. Later, he describes other explosions. One thing I learned is that at 300psi, the boiling point of water is 400 degrees. That would explain why so much of the water flashes so quickly to steam when an explosion releases the pressure.
A more dramatic example of the superheater tubes being blown out of the front end of the boiler when it explodes. This is from a book about the Ohio & Mississippi route of the B&O.
The next day I came across a "before" picture of a haystack firebox locomotive.
All Things Vintage posted seven photos with the comment: "Steam Engine Boiler Explosions." Two were of the C&O explosion at the top of this posting, so I left them out. But one of the comments on that photo is of particular interest: "
Jeff Frost Crownsheet failure due to low water (ran around 10 miles without water in the glass) is what caused this one."
A different exposure of the fifth photo above.
Even when there is no explosion, the super-heater pipes can get rather complicated.
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Ben Motantes shared and Steve Gorham shared a Steampunk Tendencies post of 23 photos with the comment: "Bizarre Vintage Photos Of Steam Engines After A Boiler Explosion From The Late 19th And Early 20th Centuries." "A Picture is Worth 1000 Words" posted a collection of 23 photos. I did not analyze if it is the same set of photos but in a different order. Richard Altorfer added five photos to that post as comments that are new.
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| Mark Howell posted C & O train whose boiler exploded in 1948 two miles south of Chillicothe, three people were killed. Lots of piping in those boilers. Ross Co. Brian K. Cornish If the water gets too low then the crown sheet over heats and fails, then you get the above shown results. Mike Gibbs Maybe the safety kept lifting and they wired it down to keep going. I have heard of this happening. Like the steam tractor that exploded at the fair. Linn Keller Or ran the boiler dry, the crownsheet got red hot, they added water and superheated steam overpressured and exploded ... that's also happened ... |
At 1:58, the narrator says the tubes were what once carried heat through the water in the boiler. But I don't think we are looking at the fire tubes. I think we are looking at the superheater tubes that carried the steam through the fire tubes to make the steam even hotter.
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| Mark Howell commented on his post They don't put all those gauges on the engine just to look pretty. WHICH red valve lowers the pressure ?!?!?!?!?!? |
A 13:04 video about the 1948 explosion. Later, he describes other explosions. One thing I learned is that at 300psi, the boiling point of water is 400 degrees. That would explain why so much of the water flashes so quickly to steam when an explosion releases the pressure.
A more dramatic example of the superheater tubes being blown out of the front end of the boiler when it explodes. This is from a book about the Ohio & Mississippi route of the B&O.
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| From the Ohio to the Mississippi, p 97 |
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| John Abbott posted Boiler Explosion 1850 Geoff Flato Boilers explode twice when they go. You definitely want to be nowhere close. Thomas Hilburn Twice? How so? Geoff Flato First explosion is the initial rupture. Second is all the water it blasted out instantly flashing to steam. It's the secondary steam flash that causes the real damage. I've seen a steam tractor go off, it's not a pretty sight. James Dove I never thought about an H2O BLEVE. In the chemical plant, the focus is on a hydrocarbon boiling. Good knowledge and perspective.Geoff Flato It's something alright. Luckily it was just a 6" inspection plate that blew out of that old Sawyer Massey. Still did some damage to things near by. If something bigger failed I probably wouldn't be here. Robert Livingston Bury-type "haystack" boiler. |
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| Carl Venzke posted Baltimore and Ohio locomotive Lafayette build in 1837 is being unloaded for display at the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1948. — Chicago Tribune photo |
Jeff Frost Crownsheet failure due to low water (ran around 10 miles without water in the glass) is what caused this one."
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| Fred Hadley posted Explosion of a locomotive in 1892. The explosion of which our engraving shows the curious results occurred at Soosmezo, in Hungary, on the railway from Budapest to Bucharest. Locomotive No.4, whose boiler exploded, had just pulled a freight train into the station and was standing upon the track, when a terrific detonation occurred that shook the earth and air with such force that all the windows of the neighboring village were broken. The greater part of the cylindrical body of the boiler, as well as the smokestack, had been projected into the air, and pieces weighing 1,500 pounds had been thrown to a distance of 200 yards. The frame of the engine, broken under distress, was bent in two near the earth, while the boiler tubes, remaining adherent to the firebox, were exposed to view like the entrails of an open cadaver. Strange to say, the accident caused no loss of life, the engineer having left the platform, while the firemen engaged in oiling the mechanism, escaped with a few non-fatal wounds. The inquest that was immediately held gave no precise results, but appears to have demonstrated that the boilerplates have been weakened through oxidation. L’illustration article in Scientific American, April 23, 1892 |
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| Bryson Hellman posted 1897 British Columbia. A haunting image of an boiler explosion. Corey Fischer The front of the engine was separated and is attached to the rear now. Interesting that they could move it away from the wreck that way. Bernd Schröter This image of destruction can be explained by the way how the pipes are fastened and sealed. The tubes are fixed on the tube wall of firebox by widening and pressing against the holes - and the short overhanging ends are hammered onto sides oround the holes getting a more flushed end. The reason is to avoid a "burning" of tube ends in the firebox by the direct fire and heat in it. This crimping gives the tubes an additional fixing. At smokebox wall the tubes are only widened because there is not a reason for addional crimping and so they tube wall of smoke box can be "slide" easier from the tubes without the retarding force of crimped ends. Modern steam engines have additional round rills in the holes of front tube walls so the tube walls are better fixed against stripping off from the tubes. Sorry, I hope for understanding. I know, my English isn't so good. [The front end was blown off the locomotive, meaning the steam blew towards the front. Maybe the crew survived this one.] Dan Gilmore posted |
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| InternationalSteam #1382 with cab in foreground [Please follow the link for more photos and a description.] "The entire boiler is pushed back about a meter on the frame and is tipped about 20 degrees to the right." |
Even when there is no explosion, the super-heater pipes can get rather complicated.
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| Carl Venzke posted Chicago, Illinois. Working on the piping of the boiler of a locomotive at the Chicago and North Western Railroad repair shops - December 1942 - Jack Delano photo |
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| Fred Hadley posted To the Editor of the Scientific American:    Thinking the readers of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN might be interested in a rather remarkable boiler explosion which happened to locomotive No. 52 on the C., W. & B. RR, on the morning of the 24th of December, 1888. I inclose you a photograph of the engine, which I took the day after the explosion. No. 52 is one of the old Rogers engines, and had been in use for about twenty-four years. At the time of the explosion, which happened about one mile west of Blanchester, Ohio, she was pulling a passenger train at a speed of over thirty miles an hour, and, strange to say, she did not leave the track, although the explosion tore the barrel of the boiler completely off from the smoke arch to the wagon top. It started on the left side and tore over the top to the right, the sheet there blocking the driving wheels so they could not turn, and destroying the air brakes, so that the engineer, Ed Rother, and fireman, Oscar Hodson (neither of whom was hurt in the least, although both were covered with soot and dirt), had to climb back over the tank and brake the train by hand. The explosion was heard for five miles, and the shock was so great that it jarred the lids off the stove in a house near the track where it happened. A piece of the bell was found over a quarter of a mile from where the explosion happened. The two men in the picture are the engineer and fireman. Hoping these facts may interest you, I remain, as ever, an interested reader of your valuable paper, which I have taken for several years. CHAS. P. GILMORE, Chillicothe, Ohio Scientific American letter and engraving, February 2, 1889 |
Stephen Byrne also shared the YouTube link.
Paul Pierson: Those are super heater pipes, front flue sheet probably failed and took out the smoke box. A crown sheet failure normally destroys the cab.
Eric Shock: Paul Pierson It was a crown sheet failure. They were running upgrade with low water trying to increase the power to get up the grade. Crown sheet became exposed as they crested, and boom... The failure occured in such a way as to push the superheater elements out of the front. The three head-end crew were all killed. ICC report was available at one time online, but I can't find it anymore.
Nathaniel Watts: Eric Shock what doesn't get understood about it is the fact that once the boiler is vented all the water flashes extremely quickly because of the lack of pressure. Failure of a crown can also blow the front tube sheet out from this scenario.
The first photo is Chillicothe, OH. And it was May 12, 1948, not 1943. It happened on Charleston Pike, just south of Chillicothe. The fireman, brakeman and engineer were all killed by scalding water. Chesapeake and Ohio RR
ReplyDeleteThanks for the update. I have changed the title and text of the posting accordingly.
DeleteI read that there was a boiler explosion on the Southern Pacific RR (@ 1940s) The RR ordered a copy of the photo of the destroyed loco to be displayed in the cab of every steam loco where the crew could see it, as a reminder.
ReplyDeleteScary - to say the least. I'm just grateful that in all the years South African Railways ran under steam of every class and size, nothing like this ever happened here - all that is now left of our once magnificent steamies are in the caring hands of preservation groups here - Umgeni, Reefsteamers, Ceres Rail, Rovos Rail, Wonder Trains, and these groups are meticulous about the safety of the crews who undergo rigid training covering every aspect of these magnificent locos...
ReplyDeleteThat would have been hairy for the crew of the 3020 locomotive on that day, what could have been done to avoid the situation from occurring? I think it would have been wise to put water in the boiler and tender before leaving the depot. I wouldn't have been surprised if the locomotive wasn't cut up soon afterwards.
ReplyDeleteThank you all for your knowledgeable explanations. Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteYou have completely pricked my boyhood bubble. I was a train spotter (really loco-spotter) in the North of England (London Midland Region) from about 1951 to 1953, Right in the heyday of steam during the British Railways era. All a huge waste of time of course, but very nostalgic! I just wish that I had modern photographic equipment at the time. I can't remember ever wanting to be a train driver, and after this period I rapidly gravitated towards science, especially Physics and Electronics.
ReplyDeletethe c&o explosion when the water is low in the boiler the boiler overheat & explode thats what cause the explosion
ReplyDeleteIn all likelihood, the level gauges in the cab were fouled and gave false readings. The fact that they were on a grade made the water level inside the boiler harder to locate. The water level must be high enough to cover the "crown sheet", where all the boiler's internal anchor staybolts are attached. Manual gauge cocks allow checking the heavy gauge glass level display shown. They backup the level indication gauge glasses and should have been regularly used to verify the gauge glass indications.
ReplyDeleteAt the time, this was an old, heavily run engine. It was being used lugging a long string of cars, a "drag freight", up a long hill at low speed. That would have used a lot of water. They could have had wheel slips, which would have also used more water and steam. Boilers typically exploded when the crown sheet staybolts overheated, got red hot, and the button heads started to flow out of the crown sheet. (Steel at very high temperatures exhibits a flow called high temperature creep.) At some point in this process one crown sheet staybolt lets go, and the remaining heads, also on the threshold, simultaneously let go, too (there are tens to hundreds) of button heads. At that exact moment, the rear of the boiler crown sheet is no longer an anchor to the many staybolts. As they let go, the volume in the boiler increases, the pressure falls slightly, the saturated water in the lower boiler flashes to steam, creating a huge slug of steam that pushes to the front of the boiler where it slams into the boiler front flue gas sheet firewall. The combined energy of the flashing steam in one of these huge "superpower" locomotives like the T-1 is like that of ten 1,000 bombs. No one can imagine what it is; no one alive has ever encountered it. All that force created at once hitting the front sheet literally blew it off like a rocket, out the front smokebox, dragging all the still retained flue tubes, and superheater tubes with it, creating the fish-mouthed opening in the front with the various types of tubes splayed out. The expanding steam engulfed and area the length of 2-3 engines in a massive blast of hot steam, scalding everything. The video makes these boiler explosion events sound almost unheard of, and they were, after the development of professional boiler design and operating standards by the ASME in the early part of the last century. That said, boiler explosions still occurred, just as airplane crashes still occur today. I know of one about the same time as this, 1950, in Colorado. It occurred on Monument Hill on the Joint Line, operated by the Rio Grande and Santa Fe railroads just north of Colorado Springs. It occurred under similar conditions. These events were very tragic, as those affected were severely scalded and invariably died a short time after the event. They still occurred up through the time steam locomotives passed into history. They have occurred within the past twenty years on tourist railroads operating these old engines. Boiler Codes (that is, laws) developed by the ASME and their associated operating rules reduced these tragic incidents to a miniscule fraction of their 1900 rate, but they still occurred.
Operating these old worn-out engines at that time Post World War II was tricky. A different type of boiler that uses "firewall" tube construction made the likelihood of these events much mode remote, and those are the stationary boilers that power fossil fired steam power plants. In all likelihood, the level gauges in the cab were fouled and gave false readings. The fact that they were on a grade made the water level inside the boiler harder to locate. The water level must be high enough to cover the "crown sheet", where all the boiler's internal anchor staybolts are attached. Manual gauge cocks allow checking the heavy gauge glass level display shown. They backup the level indication gauge glasses and should have been regularly used to verify the gauge glass indications.
its a smokebox not a flue tube firewall ffs
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