This event occurred in 1948, not 1943 as I state in the video. Sorry for the mistake. Join membership: ruclips.net/channel/UCGHDQtN_vzFYJaq_Fx1eikgjoin Second Channel: ruclips.net/channel/UCt93hxFmjppL5nLRAX94UrA Merch: teespring.com/stores/qxir Patreon: www.patreon.com/qxir Twitter: twitter.com/QxirYT Discord: discord.gg/jZzvvwJ Twitch: www.twitch.tv/qxiryt/ Subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/Qxir/
for anyone unaware, it was actually steam that blew the lid off the core in chernobyl in a similar fashion. the forces behind pressurized steam or air is nothing to downplay.
I’m a retired stationary steam engineer. That’s the best explanation of how a boiler works I’ve heard. Very easy for the average person to understand. Edit: Thanks for all the likes. God Bless y’all.
Concerning the diagram, the super heater tubes really want to be inside the fire tubes or else they're going to be cooling the steam in water. Still a good effort if one only has a week to put the whole video together.
@@luker6894 stationary steam can mean a boiler for industrial processes, such as power stations, or for running parts of a plant that produces things for food. Not necessarily a locomotive.
@@luker6894 If you come to Rockaway Beach Oregon, there is a steam train that runs daily. It was the same engine used in the Stephen King film Stand By Me.
I'm currently an apprentice steam loco engineer, and not gonna lie, that was probably the best explanation of a loco boiler- simple for all to understand but not skipping detail!
My late Dad Donald was a boiler tender on oil tankers right after WW2. He first served on the USS Tolevana then went to the USS Manity. He had many story's. It got really tricky in heavy rough seas as the water would slosh around the boiler. The fire had to be adjusted when the water left the view window cause the boiler would go red hot fast. Then when the water sloshed back on the overheated boiler plate a steam explosion was possible. Between wars he had a mostly smooth 3 year tour. But exposed to a constant snow of asbestos did him no favors. Rough sea made it bad. Testing the big deck guns above the boiler room shook clouds of asbestos from everything. By 60 he was haveing serious lung scarring breathing trouble. They removed hardened parts of his lungs to give the better parts room to breath around 65. He passed at 70 after long diminishing lungs, oxygen support and hospitalizations. He looked more like 95. Asbestos is terrible stuff. 3 years service, up to his marriage in 1950 was what did him in years later in 1999. R.I.P. Dad.
@@stratonarrow Thank you friend. He went out with full honors. Big gathering, Hearse procession, with the Harley cop trikes stopping traffic, Bugle taps, 21 gun salute, Roses to put on the casket and some to keep. I had 2. One pressed in a navy book. And one that got dry and brittle so I put it in a long test tube. He was in between ww2 and Korea so he toured the world in his tankers. Free from combat but he died due to the clouds of asbestos in the engine room. No mesothelioma. But serious lung scarring. Unfortunately he smoked and worked in an auto body shop. So the deck was stacked against him.
@@elxse4478 All the steam pipes and boilers were covered with asbestos insulation. So an engine room was coated with the stuff. Sprayed on and blanket type rolls, it wasn't hard to disturb it with vibrations, and shocks. If the ship isn't moving and you don't breath, it was perfectly safe. But the 5 inch cannon drills on the stern felt like pile drivers on the room. That's when it got cloudy with dust fast. I don't know if face filters we're available or not. Likely when it's applied but not during operation. There was still ignorance and denial concerning Asbestos risks. I think high exposure caused scarring and hardening of the lungs before mesothelioma or cancers take hold. Lesser exposure is where lung cancer popps up.
Here’s a story - the first ever boiler explosion in America was a locomotives named “Best Friend of Charleston.” In 1831, the fireman was annoyed at a whistling noise coming from the boiler, so he tied down the value that was giving off steam (some records also say he was sitting on it to make it stop). Now, what valve was it that was leaking? None other than the safety valve meant specifically to release excess pressure. So, he ties it down and goes on his duty only for the entire boiler to explode, killing him and only him. Obviously, the public was horrified at the idea they could be killed in such a gruesome way. So what does the railroad do? Throw a single wagon of cotton between the engine and passenger, that’ll save them from the explosion and the burning coals and the… oh wait no it won’t.
Sometimes, all a reaction needs be is 🤦🏻♀️ (in both cases! Whistling is the most blatant sign of steam getting out there is! Kettles on stoves anyone!? Of course the company acted like that, it's essential that you lose all common sense when becoming a higher-up in any industry.)
As long as people didn't/don't do any stupid things like that there usually isn't any danger. That cart of cotton was just to put people at ease. Of course the engineers, upper management, and anyone with the slightest of knowledge on that subject would've known that. Those were some nice facts though. Thanks.
I'd say the company was giving their clientele piece of mind. They know if the boiler blows everyone on board is fubar'd, but their clients don't know that. Let me sum it up this way, you think the airline seat cushion that's absorbed the farts from your rear end and all other rear ends that have ever sat on it alone is going to keep you afloat long enough to get rescued?
Some accounts have the fireman sitting on the safety valve to silence it. Not exactly sure how that works, but now you have the choice of imagining the first fatality on an American railroad literally being caused by a man's butt. A literal dumb ass, if you will.
My late father was an engineer in the Royal Navy. One day he walked through an invisible jet of high pressure superheated steam that was escaping from a tiny fracture in a pipe. His ankle passed through the jet and as it did so, his flesh was sliced down to the bone. He spent a few months in hospital recovering and for the rest of his life he walked with a limp. Superheated steam is insanely dangerous.
My dad worked in a power plant. This plant had two steam turbines. He told me several times that if he ever heard a loud whistling that meant that superheated steam was leaking somewhere. Since it's invisible he said the way to find the leak was to get a broomstick and slowly walk along waving it all around. When the broomstick got cut in two the leak was found.
As a boiler technician in the Us Navy for 6 years, you know full well what could happen. I knew several who were killed by steam leaks. The Iwo Jima comes to mind
In the railway museum in York they tell you the story of a steamtrain where something like this happened, I think around 100+ years ago, but I wasn't able to find any information of it. Anyway the situation was there was a medium steam leak in the engine room and going in there would kill you very quickly. The crew had managed to escape but the train was still moving at speed and were trying to work out what to do. They knew that they were going too fast, and worked out that at the next platform there would still be a train changing passengers etc. and that if nothing changed, their train would crash into it and it would be a huge catastrophe killing many, many people. It literally brings tears to my eyes thinking about it, as it has just done now, but those brave train drivers opted to sacrifice themselves by going back into that engine room and doing everything in their power to stop the train, which they did successfully and saving the lives of countless peoples and avoiding what would have been probably one of the largest train crashes in British history. They of course died in excrutiating pain in the process, being scalded to death by the steam. Absolute heros, and I think about this quite often whenever I doubt the integrity of human beings.
I remember the Iwo Jima Boiler explosion. I was deployed on the Okinawa (LPH-3). Our boiler was well beyond the cert date, so we were immediately sent to Subic for critical maintenance.
Let me clear some things up about the Evil vagina (Iwo Jima). I will try to make this short. I was an MM2 on the Iwo, in 1972-3. While fixing a leak on a main steam line, I sent a guy to get me some new nuts for the job. He came back with the right size and threads, but it was made of black anodized brass. Main steam line bolts take heat treated steel nuts, not brass! (Shortened part) we looked and couldn't find the right nuts, we reused (after some reworking) the original nuts. In the process, we found that those (brass) nuts ONLY fit on main steam lines! No application for them on ANY low pressure/temperature equipment! I started, randomly, getting working parties to throw the brass nuts overboard. There was that ONE guy! I wound up being placed on report for destruction of government property, I explained what was going on. I was told to stop (actually several times!) I told people then, that those nuts were gonna get somebody killed! They let me off the hook, when I decided to reenlist just to get off that damn ship! When I left, they gave me 2.0 evals! F'ed up my orders to my new ship (wound up getting way better orders!😊). That steam leak was predicted many years before it happened, and never should have happened! In case you're wondering, yes, it pisses me off to no end!
When I saw that image, I knew what happened to the crew. They died horribly. Steam is not tamed willingly, it must be tended very carefully. Great video.
@@smeggiamagarwine And a big difference between Steam Burns an regular Burns is that Regular Burns just sear off your nervs so the pain is over rather quickly. Steam Burns on the other don't do that, no matter how severe they are. So you feel everything from the begining till the end. Most of the Steam Burn victims don't become uncuncious either. It's truely one of the most horrific deaths you can imagin.
The part that needs emphasizing is that a boiler explosion isn't just the steam in the boiler sorta leaking out, it's the instantaneous flash of all the water from it's critical state to steam, which expands in volume by about 2000 times, releasing a lot of stored heat energy as kinetic energy in doing so. And traditionally, a substance transitioning from one state to a gas while expanding greatly and releasing a great deal of energy is called an explosion. A steam locomotive boiler of that size at 300PSI/450C contains the equivalent energy of about 45,000 kg of TnT. This reserve is usually spent gradually and safely, working in the cylinders. But when the boiler ruptures, it's all released at once. Not something to disrespect in the slightest, but not something a lot of people really understand.
Your numbers seem kind of high. 45 t of TnT would mean, that the energy of around 7 t of coal would have to be stored in the water and most steam locomotives only carried 4-18 t of it. Also the water in the boiler is not supercritical.
@@mathewcherrystone9479 maybe i dropped a number doing the enthalpy. I was basing it on the dimensions of a T1 boiler and the formula from Ralph Johnsons's "The Steam Locomotive". It's a remarkable amount of energy, regardless.
@@stev3548 Yes definitely. Everything under high pressure, that either is a gas/vapor or will turn into one, if the pressure vessel fails, is basically a bomb.
When a boiler experiment a rupture, the sudden pressure drop makes part of the superheated steam condense back into water drops and throw them at high speed to the leaking point. The mass and speed of the water drops deal a lot of damage to the boiler walls, weakening the whole thing and making the explosion even worse.
To put that power in perspective; on 17th November, 1943, the boiler of a freight locomotive exploded near Honeybourne, Worcestershire, England. The chimney (smoke stack) was a thick-walled iron casting, about 20-24" in diameter, and about 48" long. It was found about *three-quarters of a mile* from the wreck. And, bear in mind, the likelihood is that rather than travelling horizontally away from the blast, its initial path was more likely to have been steeply upwards; if so, how high it went is anyone's guess. The loco was an S-160 Class 2-8-0, engine + tender weight 276,500 lbs (125.4 tonnes), far smaller than the 2-10-4 C & O T1, which weighed 981,000 lbs (445 tonnes). The S-160 was designed by the USA Transportation Corps, and shipped over by the hundred to England, for onward shipping to Europe after D-Day. The official enquiry found that the cause was low water in the boiler, and suggested that the crew had been mislead by a valve on the water gauge glass sticking when it was only partly open, so the fireman thought it was in fact fully open (as it is in normal working). British engines invariably used a simple on/off stop valve, which turns through 90 degrees from fully shut to wide open, so giving the crew a clear visual indication of the valve's position - but the S-160 had multi-turn ball valves, which appear the same whether open or closed. After close inspection, it was found that the valve in question had a slightly bent spindle (not due to damage in the explosion), which jammed the valve from further movement when only partly open. A steam loco is, in all but name, a self-propelling bomb - and crews forget that at their peril. A point which was ruthlessly pounded into me when I worked as a fireman on steam locos.
The “power” in these steam systems is outrageous - we kind-of assume these older technologies must be weaker, but it’s not so. These harness huge forces and are generally safe. But when they fail, they do so catastrophically.
@@RandomStuff-he7lu - This is a great point, that the differences in these plants are just different ways to create the heat to make steam. I really hope we humans can add fusion to this list someday - the abandonment of expanding nuclear energy (not for the worst reasons, granted) in the US is really a shame and has kept us burning rocks and dinosaur juice to make this heat for too long, in my opinion anyway.
I’d never seen the actual insides of a steam locomotive despite my childhood fascination with them, so just seeing all those pipes sticking out of it seemed like an eldritch horror crawling out of the locomotive
From my first impression, I actually thought this was gonna be a story where the crew had been riding the train cross country, went insane, and had stuck all that to the front and were incoherent when they were finally found if not dead, but knowing the real story, what it is, and how they died, that, being real, is actually a damn sight more terrifying. And I have a vivid imagination, so when he described the blind brakeman claiming he begged the other two to put more water in just before he died, I just.... dear god thats both a heart breaking and terrifying site to imagine, much less see for real..... I'm fairly certain the people that recovered this wreck and the crew, didn't sleep well for many many nights....
As a railfan I'm impressed with how well researched this video was, especially for a non-train-oriented channel. He was able to properly describe how a steam locomotive worked in laymen's terms without making it feel childish, even discussing the process of superheating steam (which most non-train channels don't even think about covering). He also nailed the locomotive identification, which again, most channels gloss over. Great job Qxir, you've earned the railfan stamp of approval!
how much do you know about rail fasteners? I'm very confused by the plates and clips shown in this picture. It looks like plates meant for only spikes but there are clips somehow attached? I don't see any slots to install them, it almost looks like the clips are welded to the plates themselves
@@bloomsux69 There is actually a bit of an inaccuracy in the diagram at 1:30 : the pipes of the exchanger go inside the fire tubes of the boiler, not into the water as the diagram would imply. This one illustrates what's going on better: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Locomotive_fire_tube_boiler_schematic_(with_superheater).png
Steam locomotives may be old fashioned technology but they're insanely powerful, and when human error comes into play, that power can be devastating. In 1994 a British steam locomotive called 'Blue Peter' was hauling a special train from Edinburgh to York, but it only got as far as Durham north of York. The inexperienced crew filled the boiler too full and after leaving Durham station the engine slipped and the wheelspin carried water into the cylinders, jammed the steam valve open, and the engine thrashed itself into a wheel spin of 140 miles per hour, causing the side rods to tear off and the cylinders to explode. When the driver tried to wind back the forward-reverse gear it span round and injured him with a broken finger at the least. The track practically melted and had to be replaced, and it took 18 months and hundreds of thousands of pounds to repair the damage. Those who work on steam locomotives today refer to them as "bombs on wheels".
My Great Grandmother had a story about a similar incident with a distant relative. According to her, at one point an ancestor of mine was listed as the only person to fly a steam locomotive and survive. The boiler had been run until completely "dry". In other words it was all steam, no water. Due to the extreme risk it was decided to let it cool down without running it at the far edge of the rail yard. My ancestor drew the short straw and had to ride brakes on this and was in the cab while another locomotive was used to push it out to the chosen spot. At some point in this process the boiler partially ruptured. The rupture was on the bottom of the boiler and the steam rushed out at an angle down and towards the rear, becoming a crude steam rocket. The locomotive became airborne as a result of this new rocket, and flew some distance possibly 90 feet. The landing was a terrifying wreck, injuring my ancestor. He suffered a broken back, an assortment of bruises, burns, scrapes and cuts. Due to fear and adrenaline he was able to get out and run a fair distance away before collapsing. He was taken to the hospital and after being cared for there for a time, he healed the rest of the way he could at home. He was never able to return to his old job due to the results of the injuries. He could not walk far, had many aches and pains, did not have full use of his hands and so on. He made a living as best as he could by tinkering and making toys and little gadgets to sell. He would never get on a train for the rest of his life, and would sometimes start shaking uncontrollably when he was close to a running one at a road crossing.
@@ordinaryJeff Add a vast store of pent up energy, iron and steel, heat an season with a lack of understanding of metal fatigue and presto, a particularly horrible explosion.
@@erggml1887 Indeed. The 'mother hubbard' design must have been particularly stressful. Now you have possible steam explosions combined with possible drivetrain failure sending a side rod ripping through the cab on the side.
@@ΆγγελοςΜορίκης-ζ2ω No worries, I have made a few adjustments. It should be less bad now. Saying that it is better would be too much of a stretch though.
@@francocervera8984 when water turns to steam, it expands to about 1700 times its size. When a boiler ruptures, the pressurized steam/water immediately flashes to superheated steam (superheated is steam who's temperature is above it's corresponding pressure. That immediate expansion is a bomb. If the boiler is dry fired (no water), there is nothing to keep the shell and tubes cooled, therefore it becomes pliable and compromised. An example of the importance of water- take a paper cup filled with water. Place it on your BBQ or open fire. The cup will not melt and only burn down as the water evaporates in it .
That's definitely one of the creepiest photos I've seen in a long time. Without explanation or context, it's chilling. It almost looks like a photoshopped image you'd seen in a "top 10 scary photos" clickbait video. But it's real. The pipes like terrifying insect-esque appendages ripping out of a cabin where people were just doing their job.
This is what I was thinking as well. Before hearing the explanation of what happened, it was very chilling. Those pipes look so grotesque, almost otherworldly. I just kept thinking, "what did they hit? What could have done this?" It does look surreal.
To me, at first glance, that photo looks like something out of Lovecraftian horror where some unknown Omnipotent monster is using this train as a portal to violently enter our reality!
taken out of the steam boiler context and observed by someone who knows few about steam locomotive, the pipes looks that way due to the fact most people dont associate steam locomotives with a bunch of pipes, so the appearance of a bunch of wriggling pipe sprawling from inside a locomotive comes off as uncanny and unnerving
As a lad in the mid 1950s, I remember seeing a loco that had suffered the same fate, only the backhead had blown out. I was mightily impressed by the damage I could see from closeup track side but I imagine the cab interior would have been hell on earth for a split second. I still have the image of that wrecked engine in my mind.
While after the end of WW2, there were many trains that did detonate in a similar fashion between 1940 to 1945. Most due to insufficient servicing. Many trains would pull into station with cargo, be turned right back around with coal and water refilled and some minor lubrication. Trainman once told me that a locomotive need major service every 1,000 hours of use. During the war, most trains were taken to 5,000 to 10,000 hours. The older the train, the higher the likelihood of catastrophic failure.
@@needsmetal The government ran the railroads during WW1 when the railroad companies couldn’t get the job done. The government DID NOT run the railroads during WW2 as the companies, having learned their lesson from WW1; fully cooperated w/each other during WW2. Please get your facts straight before posting such gibberish & non-facts.
Not only that, but even though they could be considered essential to the war effort & not drafted, many younger crew members still served in the military. As a result, women took their place.
@@jamessimms415 Everyone was expected to help. My grandmother was in her teens and was expected to go to dances and socials to help with morale. Chicago was the last stop before boarding ships at Soldier Field or moving on to New York. As for trains, my great great grandfather helped lay rail in Pennsylvania and Ohio, worked his way up to a mechanic position during the 1880s to 1906. After which, he took a job working at the first Olds dealer in Chicago. Early on in WW1, he had to go back to working a roundhouse in southern Chicago. Smelled of coal and rendered pig fat, from what I was told. He'd have to get inside the firebox, perform maintenance, replace piping and pressurize the system with steam from another train. On the outside, you had to test all the pistons, rings, wheels and the scrape off all the oil grease before slathering on that pig fat using a mop.
I’m a Steam and Thermal Energy Engineer and this is an excellent and simple explanation of what happens if the level of water in a Fire Tube Boiler isn’t correct. If you’re OK with it, I’d like to use your video for educational purposes. What happens: The tubes with the hot air overheat because of lack of water to cool, they melt and let an overflow of hot air directly into the water that still is in the boiler. That way most of the water immediately turns to steam, taking more space than is available, since steam has 1600 times more volume than water. The effect is a very powerful explosion that is not caused by combustion of a medium, but by expansion of one. With devastating results. Steam will instantly boil the flesh off your bones. Also superheated steam isn’t visible, which makes it tricky. Luckily superheated steam, when superheated enough, doesn’t easily transfer its energy, as saturated steam does, so it is more likely burns will occur from saturated steam than superheated steam. This also happened to steam boilers in industrial use causing them to be blown of their fundament, taking everything down in its way, even concrete walls. That’s why automatic level monitoring in redundant setup is obliged today.
Spot on! Retired nuke plant ops here, and a stationary engineer. Our plant design is the only kind that uses superheated steam. I've seen the broomstick cut-in-half thing a number of times. You have to respect the stuff, that's for sure.
Correct me if I am in error but the firebox is more less at atmospheric pressure while the steam is at high pressure/ Low water levels means the fire tubes and crown sheet )top of the firebox) overheat and soften. At some point the crown sheet / tubes can not withstand the pressure and rupture. At that point the steam being at high pressure will tend to blow back through the firebox and blow the fire along with superheated steam right back into the cab. If there is a massive crown sheet or tube failure you could launch the whole boiler.. In the accident scene above it looks' to me like the smoke box (front of the locomotive) failed and the cab was intact. To me that would indicate some sort of blow-back through the firebox is what scalded the crew
@@gerry5712 There are a few things wrong with his Dee's explanation; if a boiler tube failed you'd have steam at high pressure inside the boiler looking to get out, not hot air looking to get in. Also no practical amount of hot air getting into the boiler would boil all the water immediately, the amount of energy required just would be far more than the air can carry. Doesn't make much sense to me.
No. Hot air will not over flow directly into the water. The highly pressurized water escaping will be forcing air out of the way. The hot air is not under any pressure.
@@ld4244 I reread my comment and realized I did make it look like the air boils all the water in the boiler, which isn’t possible because of the amount of energy that would take. I guess that’s the price for typing a comment hastily on a phone. The point I tried to make was that indeed the tube that is not in the water when the level is too low, will get soft and rupture. The boiler mostly is pressurized between 10 - 12 barg. (I have to assume with steam trains it’s the same as industrial boilers) That means there is water fluid at 180 to 188 degrees Celsius. The firebox and the tubes obviously are not under that much pressure, it might be slightly more than atmospheric pressure, but not that much. If the tubes melt an opening occurs to atmospheric pressure. The pressurized water will flash to steam immediately when it gets out to atmospheric pressure, which will give the effect I meant. That would also give a blow back effect into the fire box indeed, where hot gas and saturated steam will be entering the cabin with obvious results for the crew. So the sudden pressure drop will cause the water to flash into steam, expanding 1600 times, which acts like an explosion basically.
They where quite common in the early days of steam. Drivers would sometimes screw the safety valve cover down more than it should have been to get a bit more power. This didnt often end well.
And the fact that proper dry steam is invisible in most conditions when leaking and can burn or even cut you if you happened to expose your skin to it accidentally..
They aren't more common because steam locomotives are really safe, what makes accidents like this happen is gross incompetence from an engineer/ mechanics. A bit like what goes for planes.
The boiler itself is incredibly simple in design. The core ideals have not really changed for hundreds of years. The complexity comes from putting a boiler on top of wheels and sending it down the track at high speeds. The part that is not covered super well in this video is it's not a lack of water going up an incline that probably did it in, it's the change from level track to an incline that caused the explosion. It's likely the crew was trying to build up as much steam as possible by not adding fresh water but let the level get too low and the crown sheet (top of the boiler) became uncovered by water. This let the crown sheet get extremely hot due to their no longer being water keeping it cool. The problem this causes is as soon as the train starts up the incline, the water level in the boiler slants back which would then cover the red hot crown sheet with water again. This instantaneously flashes all the water that makes contact with it to steam which rapidly expands in volume and well.... boom.
@@Kboyer36 from a physics perspective that's similar to what happened at Chernobyl in 1986. The water in the loop flashed off to steam, exploding and then with no more water to regulate the heat the reactor contents melted down and a hydrogen explosion occurred.
My old engineer tutor explained a small boiler steam explosion "Id rather be in a room filled with a natural gas leak and strike a match. The super heated water when it expands escapes from the fail point and as water droplets at that speed and state struggle to malform and will not compress you might as well be stood infront of a Claymore mine. It will flay the flesh from your bones. This is why we have separate temperature and pressure relief valves." Elequently put! Same chap when some lads were improperly using a grinding wheel said "When a chunk breaks off and goes into your groin and you have to tell your girlfriend shes never having kids with you, dont say you werent warned." His health & safety briefings were one sentence that you never forget! He knew just how to put fear and sense into daft young lads to get results.
Boiler explosions used to be a major issues for steamboats and trains back in the day when few had an understanding of engines worked. From the mid-1800s to around 1900 you can find hundreds of stories of these terrifying stores. It because some an issue the problem made it’s way to the Halls of Governments on ways to prevent the accidents.
@@PhantomEagle.. Sultana's accident could've been avoided if the captain had kept the boat in port to have the boiler properly repaired rather than a temporary job. The boat was also overloaded so the boilers would've been worked harder than normally.
Why the fuck are you guys talking about politics in a video about a boiler explosion I like to get political myself, but only in political comment sections. Now shut up about politics and get on topic
Many years ago, I worked on preserved steam locomotives in the UK, eventually getting to the level of Fireman - the guy who's responsible for the fire, water and steam levels on the engine. Always a balancing act to keep a good fire, good pressure and water levels, but I had the best teacher and a good friend who showed me all the tricks - Driver Keith. The trickiest part was often the injectors - the way you get water into the boiler, overcoming the pressure with nothing more than the steam pressure from the boiler. They used a very clever series of cones to accelerate the steam, collect the water and force it into the boiler. Some could be.... temperamental, and it was always a relief when they 'caught' and the water level would increase. If the injectors stopped working you were in serious trouble! The boilers of the engines I worked on had 'boiler plugs', made from a metal with a lower melting point than the steel of the boiler casing, so they would fail first, release the pressure and stop a catastrophic explosion if ever the water level got too low, exposing the 'crown' of the boiler/firebox. There's also the safety valve, which was set to lift at a certain pressure above the normal operating pressure - with GWR boilers that was usual 250lbs/sq inch. Boilers had to be tested and would receive a certificate before they could be used on an engine.... I saw one being tested where the safety valve got stuck and wouldn't lift, and the pressure put the needle against the stop on the gauge, and carried on rising! Some brave soul (not me!) volunteered to climb onto the boiler and prize it open with a large nail, which worked with an ear-splitting roar and a plume of steam shooting hundreds of feet into the air! Happy days!
Mark Twain's brother, in fact, was killed in a boiler explosion like this, except on a riverboat. Twain always felt guilty for this death because he was supposed to be working in his brother's place on the boat at the time of the disaster but was earlier thrown off as a result of an argument (and physical altercation) with the boat's captain.
@@FishVirus I think indirectly. After The accident Twain didn't want to work on riverboats anymore, so he had to find other occupations, which lead him to writing.
I was a boiler tech in the U.S.Navy on a destroyer (U.S.S Cone DD866 ) We all knew in the "hole" that a rupture of a down comer, the 3 inch generating tubes inside the boiler (M Type) would empty the 15,000 gallons of water into the space as steam in about 9 seconds, with no chance of survival. Once a one inch tube burst in the forward boiler room, two spaces ahead. We could hear it all the way back in our space, and assumed the worse had happened. Fortunately because of the smaller diameter of the ruptured tube most of the steam emptied into the fire box and up the stack. There were no injuries. I knew that if I were to die in Viet Nam it would be by boiling alive, not a bullet. Thanks to all Veterans for their service!
The metal tubing of a steam train’s engine splayed out after an engine explosion like an angel’s wings is truly a haunting sight, and the death caused by any responsible for said accident, intentionally or otherwise, is truly horrific. It’s not often that an image strikes such dread and fear into the viewer without any context.
I remember this photo! My father was a huge train nut, and he would always tell me romantic stories about these beautiful old engines. And also, the not so beautiful aspects. I distinctly recall how he described this tragic incident to me as a child. _"Boiled to death by the steam."_ To this day, just the thought alone makes me shudder.
This picture is especially horrifying when you compare it to the picture of the undamaged version. More than half of the train was blown away by the explosion.
I worked with high pressure boilers at a refinery and for safety, if the water level got low the fuel valves would shut. Obviously, on this vintage equipment, such safety measures weren't around. Also, the steam brakes on the earliest trains took steam pressure to close the brakes. IOW if you lost steam pressure, your brakes failed open and the train would run away and it actually happened and from that incident, the brakes were re-engineered so that it took steam pressure to open the brakes. This way, if they lost steam pressure, the brakes would slam shut, stopping the train. But, it took an accident and loss of life for them to realize their engineering mistake.
From my experience with similar stories in modern times even, its not that they had to realize their mistakes, they tend to be fully aware of them but don't take those who warn them seriously until something really bad happens and they can't ignore it anymore for publicity and legal reasons. There normally is always at least one highly qualified person who is aware of an issue and warns of it right from the start who then is ignored until the problem gets too large to ignore. It was the same story with leaded fuel, with cigarette smoking, with nuclear power (although there was an incident prior to chernobyl that actually would have been just as bad but it's impact was significantly reduced thanks to a nuclear engineer who's warnings were reluctantly heeded) and many other things. Obviously whenever warnings are heeded, we rarely hear about it, so it creates a sort of bias. Mostly people actually design things pretty well.
Air brakes in big trucks have the same story. Back in the day the brakes were released by default and it took air pressure to apply them, which meant if there was loss of air for any reason the only way to stop a truck was through engine braking (which usually meant the truck went runaway). In modern trucks it's the reverse, it takes air to release the brakes. A truck can still go runaway for various reasons, usually by overheating brakes to inoperability, but at least there's a bit of a warning and grace period before all hell breaks loose.
Today, all engines with explosion/fire hazard have 'fail Safe ' interlocking. I know a case in which an algorithm error that went un-noticed for a long time, resulted in explosion one day.
@@nocensorship8092 Very true. Its the concept of. "By the time this goes wrong, ill be dead and buried, and it will be someone elses issue to resolve." Its super common in the programming world. Easier to do something the quick way and have someone else fix it up years down the line when issues arise from the quick fix.
You should do a video on the "Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway". The Worlds Smallest public railway. The owner being a former race car driver and millionaire, who had a interesting way of running the line, including an armoured train used to defend the line from the German air force in WW2. Would be a fun video
Ive been on this train as a kid. My dog fell in the canal as she thought the water lilies growing on the surface was dry land! Bless her, she was a good dog :)
Used to work at a park with an old steam engine and if the train didn't go in time, they'd shut the whole thing down, blow out the steam, and start over. Guests would complain at me and I would answer "Sorry for the inconvenience." While my brain is going "You have no clue what a BLEVE is, do you, and I rather keep my skin than have it boiled off..."
To put it in perspective Qixr, As a high pressure boiler operator and Master Plumber. An average residential 40 gallon water heater, if altered by, say, capping off a leaking relief valve that's dripping. Has easily the potential, upon explosion to go from the basement, through the roof of a two story home. And that's peanuts to the kind of pressure we're talking here. Love the channel
@@davidconn3222 For sure Dave. In my 36 years as a plumber, I can honestly say that I've personally witnessed dozens of times where a homeowner "fixed" the leak on their water heater, which was water coming out of the runoff tube from the Temperature and Pressure Relief Valve by screwing a brass plug or cap to "stop" it from leaking. These valves are factory set to start dripping at either 150 PSI water force, or 210 degrees water temperature. Since most Americans should remember from grade school that boiling point of water is 212 degrees. I think we can safely agree that the valve can quite literally save your life by avoiding those additional 2 degrees, though they usually are compromised and drip less than 210. They work by spring tension in the valve that will allow water to be released by the tank before danger. In my 12 plus years teaching plumbing schools. I was given OSHA and WH Manufacturers written and even video reports of what can really occur. It's unsettling
@Super Mario Thanks for listening to me blather my friend ! William really explains it better than me, I'm sure. I just dig meeting a fellow tradesman in the comments
I’ve been scalded before. It gave me second degree burns with those ‘bubbles’ on my hand, after a few days of intense burning all over. I immediately had to keep dunking it in water to relieve the pain until it hurt again, then take it out until the burning came back, then repeat the motions. When the hot ass water first came in contact with my flesh, I screamed loud. It hurt that bad. I don’t want to even imagine having that all over my body. Ever.
I spend the odd Sunday on a heritage railway in New Zealand, and we have a small industrial steam locomotive which we run. I've served as fireman in this little 99 year old loco and it demands constant attention, balancing coal, air and water to maintain a usable pressure. You have to forward plan, nothing happens instantly but it is just a pleasure to control the immense energy our little B10 has, Every time we fire it, we run it up till the safety valve activates (155psi) just to test it's function. It'd be insane not to have it!
I'm sure many already know but for those that don't "super heated steam" isn't like the "wet steam" most people would be familiar with. It's a different beast with some unusual properties relative to what most people think of as "steam"
@@TheGoopGod the steam heated up a lot more by running it back through the firebox piping before going to the pistons. The steam expands a lot more, so you more energy out of it without giving the boiler itself more pressure.
Superheated steam has a higher level of potential energy. Is isn't visible like saturated steam (albeit a steam leak is extremely loud) and burns are much more severe. Depending on the pressure, putting your hand in a stream of superheated steam would probably blow the flesh of your bones. (For reference I work in a powerplant with 600psi superheated steam boilers).
Bear in mind: steam remains steam as you get it hotter, all the way to the point where it becomes a PLASMA. So superheated is anything from 100C all the way to THOUSANDS of C.
"... the blinded brakeman explaining that he had begged the other two crewmembers to put water in the boiler." The poor man died horribly as a consequence of others' arrogance and incompetence. Sad to say, that sort of injustice will always be with us.
I’m sure you have heard of Casey Jones? He saved his fireman from death by pushing him off the train, instead of jumping and saving himself he stayed at the controls and slowed his train down until it hit the stalled train. He saved many lives so not all train engineers are evil as you’d have us believe.
@@peterf.229 Thank you for the story of Casey Jones. I'm sure there are many admirable and heroic train engineers in the world. My comment was directed at "culpable but unassailable" people in general, not at train engineers. My Dad (RIP, and sorely missed) worked on the railways for several years before winning a bursary to study mechanical engineering.
It does not surprise me this happened in Ohio. EDIT: 1st, how did this get 1k likes, 2nd, people still watch this video? 3rd, what is going on in the comments section.
Very good video, The suffering may not have been as bad as you think. I received 3rd degree steam burns over the top half of my body. Felt nothing but the impact for about 1 hr. Then wow! They usually die from steam inhalation. It scalds the lungs, which blister over inside, then suffocates them. Dead men walking. They knew it, the Railroads knew it, and, if possible, would somtimes get family members to them for last words. They may have 2hrs or so. So, the lesson learned is that if you are trapped in a poisonous cloud, fireball, or steam, resist the natural urge to inhale from fear or pain, close your eyes, or at least one. And get out. Saved me 2x. Whenever im around steam boilers of any kind, even at museums, or shows I trust no one, and, I ALWAYS cast a glance at the water sight gauge first because i know where it should be. THEN the pressure gauge.
Seeing a hole in an engine block bad, but seeing the guts of a steam boiler explosion is gruesome. Being hit with a shock wave of dry steam, followed by wet steam, and then with water. I'm guessing the meat just falls off the bone after that?
@@MikeBarbarossa Depends on the failure. I have seen pictures like this where the back half was blown off and the entire cab was relocated to the other end of the train.
I learned about this event in history class and I believe my teacher knew one of the crew members that had died. From what I remember the main conductor believed this newer style engine could run with little water and was trying to push it past its breaking point to prove the engine wouldnt blown up but clearly it did.
I live very close to where this happened and drive pretty near to where I believe it occurred basically everyday. It's very weird to hear about an event this close to home. So few people around here know about it. The only people I've ever heard talk about it were my great grandparents who remember seeing the aftermath and hearing a distant boom
There was an accident like that in Bulgaria.The level glass was clogged and it wasn't showing that the water level was too low,causing the metal to overheat . The engineer noticed that and decided to add water without realizing that the boiler was nearly empty,causing huge volume of steam to suddenly form and boom.one of the crew members was thrown out by the explosion and survived.the other crew member supposedly was just a bare skeleton,the steam removed everything....
Somebody watched Mark "Hyce" Huber's "Steam 101: 10 Levels of Steam Locomotive Understanding" video. And if not, I highly recommend it. The explanation here is a very good summary (particular kudos for talking about the superheater; not even a lot of steam folks mention that, though the superheater pipes should be passing through the flue tubes, not adjacent to them), so the other video can be thought of as a greater elaboration on what Qxir says here. All very accurate, well done. Boiler explosions are funny things; you know something's going to go catastrophically wrong, but you never know quite how. Sometimes, like in this incident, the front or back of the boiler will fail and the locomotive will basically vomit itself inside out. Other times, the force of the escaping steam will launch the whole boiler barrel off the frames like a rocket. Maybe all the force is directed straight down and causes the boiler to hop up into the air, which if the train is still moving may cause it to come down and crush the next car behind the locomotive (this happened to a coal mine owner's private train in, I want to say 1916). Rarely you might get lucky and most of the boiler will hold together, with only part of the crownsheet failing and venting steam and superheated water (water heated past the boiling point without vaporizing) out into the cab; this is what befell the crew of the Gettysburg Railroad in 1995. Or, as is the most common, the sudden flash of steam as the superheated water is exposed to atmospheric pressure will cause the entire boiler barrel to simply pop like a giant steel balloon.
I think superheaters are usually not mentioned as not all locomotives have them, you don´t need superheaters for a simple locomotive to work. Though they are what makes the pictures of this incident so interesting. "Wet steam" locomotives are a heck of a lot easier to maintain and drive. No replacement of the superheater pipes, the flue tubes(?) are easier to clean, you don´t need special oil for the cylinders (at dry steam temperatures, normal oil would burn and leave a crust inside the cylinders). Also, the loco reacts quicker (because the steam doesn´t have to pass through the superheater to get to the pistons) and it doesn´t freak out should you get water in the superheater (sudden evaporation leads to extra high pressure in the cylinders, causing wheelslip.) I love wet steam locos. But I´m biased, as efficiency doesn´t really play a role if you´re only driving a few times a year and you´re only pulling 2 cars on level ground. ;D
I operated steam propulsion systems for several years and have a long-term interest in historical steam. The boilers shown--the "rearranged" boilers shown--are all "fire tube" boilers. They have a relatively high volume of hot, pressurized (high energy) water. Thus, they can be quite enthusiastic when given the opportunity. I note that none of the boilers shown appear to have suffered a crown sheet rupture. Instead, portions of the external boiler shell have gone AWOL, leaving their internal spaghetti exposed. Thus, low water level is not necessarily the root cause of the failure. The crown sheet is the top of the fire box (furnace). If water level gets too low, the crown sheet is the first thing to overheat. An old issue with steam locomotives, and much more-so with steam tractors, was having the water move away from the crown sheet when engine was traveling downhill (rails being relatively level while steam tractors rolled across open fields). The exposed crown sheet would overheat. When the boiler's water once again visited the crown sheet, the extremely hot metal would cause a lot of water to promptly flash to steam. The resulting pressure pulse could rupture the boiler. Heated metal becomes weaker. Thus, in low water failures a common rupture point was the crown sheet (the pressure pulse possibly not being sufficient to overcome the strength of the boiler's shell in general, but now being powerful enough to rip open the top of the overheated and weakened fire box). The return of the water to the crown sheet could be due to feeding new water into the boiler or it could be due to the engine traveling uphill which caused the water to "slosh" back to the firebox. Keeping track of the gauge glass (or monitoring the "try cocks" in even earlier designs... a feature common in early river steamboat boilers) was an important task for the fireman. A common energy management tactic for dealing with up grades was to increase the boiler level to the high end of the operating range well before reaching a hill. This action depressed boiler pressure (while the colder feed water was heated) when the engine did not need the extra energy, and allowed the feed rate to be cut back (but typically held near or slightly below consumption rate) while the high pressure was needed for the climb. Of course, a lot depended upon just how long the climb was. Feeding new water to keep the crown sheet covered on a down-grade was not an energy issue because gravity was helping them along. Failures such as shown often occurred because of localized weakness in the pressure shell of the boiler. This could be a rivet, a stay-bolt, the swage joint where a firetube joined the fire box (cab end) or smoke box (front end), a leaky riveted seam, externally caused damage, or simply a localized weakness in a piece of pressure plate. The hot, pressurized water in these boilers produced "saturated" steam immediately above the liquid surface. The water is a reservoir of energy. If pressure drops, more water flashes to steam. When a significant leak develops, especially a prompt leak such as a localized small rupture, the pressure drop leads to a steam flash with a consequent pressure pulse. The event sequence is very rapid. The boiler shell failure would then expand leading to more steam flashing. In the end the boiler is empty and the local atmosphere has experienced a temporary extreme rise in humidity. There are very good reasons that steam plant operators must pass tests and be licensed.
One imagines it must have been hell when working steam locomotives through the mountains. Beyond brake failure, is this why grades should be (ideally) less than 2%? Your explanation accounts for the fact that pusher locomotives were needed in the mountain regions - not that the hauling locomotives were powerful enough, but that the power was limited
@@jackdunster-x9b A big part of the limit on railroad grade is the coefficient of friction between the steel wheel and the steel rail. The rolling friction of steel on steel is quite low. This is one reason that railroad transport is quite energy efficient. However, the initial traction effort is quite low. Getting a train rolling in the first place (or stopped from speed) can be tricky. Couplers are designed to help the start-up problem (a topic for someone else's video). Video of steam engines pulling out of the yards (or station) from a stopped condition will often show a sudden "break-away" of the wheels on one or both sides. The slow chuff, chuff will suddenly be replaced by a very rapid chuffchuffchuffchuff and spinning wheels without associated increased train velocity. In those cases, the traction effort exceeded the available coefficient of friction. In specific instances, dumping sand on the rails was used to improve local friction/traction (again, someone else's video should cover these details). So grade limit is closely related to the coefficient of steel-on-steel rolling friction. Stay curious.
Ahhh....saw this thumbnail and instantly knew it was a superheater boiler explosion. When I was a kid growing up in the 1980s I was obsessed with steam locomotives and remember seeing this(and other incidents) and reading about them in books. Glad to see someone has brought this story and knowledge to the modern era of RUclips for the next generation to see. This type of thing was absolutely horrific, and yes, human error was usually the cause.
One of my friends is in the family business of managing apartment buildings in New York City. His family have so many interesting stories of interacting with tenants and doing building inspections. My friend found boxes of newspapers from the 1930s-40s and one article described how a basement boiler exploded, rocketed upward and crashed through all ten floors, then landed on the roof of another building half a block away.
I spent 16 years in the Navy and one area I never wanted anything to do with was the boilers. Even the steam driven catapults on the carriers gave me the willies. What a terrible way to go, especially as they didn't die right away.
I was a Damage Controlman in charge of repair 5 aboard the USS. Rathburne DE 1057. It had a 1200 psi super heated working pressure system. If a steam pipe blew, you had 13 seconds and you better be out of the space or pray there's sufficient water in the bilges to cover you. Spent 3 years, 7 months aboard that ship, and never liked going into the engineering spaces while underway.
@@perfumegoose Thanks, Tim . I did not know about the Iwo Jima incident where ten sailors were scalded to death when a valve bonnet blew off. Very sad. That was a 600 psi. system. The ship I was on was 1200 psi and all of them were taken out of service early. I think because of the danger of fatigued weld joints and pin-hole leaks in the boiler pipes made the ships a potential nightmare. Once night while in Subic bay, I was the only one aboard ship that could weld. Everyone other crew member , than the duty section was ashore,. or if aboard was drunk. I was approached by a second class machinist mate that wanted me to weld a flange on a high pressure valve. He said we wouldn't be able top get underway the next day if it wasn't done. When I saw the extra heavy flange ,I told him I wasn't qualified to weld high pressure and in no way would I attempt it. He got mad at me and welded it himself with 7018 rod. We pulled out the next day. It held. 7018 is great rod, but not on a 1200 ib. system.
@@davidlarson9975 People like that are why other people die. 7018 is common carbon steel. I would say 3 to 5 passes. No one on board is allowed to weld level 1 except in an emergency.
Theres an even worse boiler explosion ,it happend 1977 in east germany . The only difference to this case was that the boiler exploded in a station . Not only the crew but also passengers died. A total of 5 people died and 50 people were injured
My thoughts exactly. I hope the doctors at the hospital or the paramedics who attended them were able to pump them full of morphine before they finally died.
Must of? Not sure of that. Ive been burned before, the shock of your skin dying blunts the pain. Ive heard accounts of people with third degree burns who were lucid enough to talk casually with paramedics while their pale fat tissue was exposed and visible, burned away. Any severe enough damage to the body will destroy your nerves and negate your ability to feel what just happened to you. In a way, i would prefer more severe burns because it would ensure nothing of my nerves would be left to cause pain later.
I used to make giant propane tanks for busses, and part of the process is sealing every valve with a plug, and putting the tank through a phosphate wash before being powder coated in a paint booth. Once painted we put the tanks through a massive oven to create a shiny waterproof coat of paint. Once it comes out of the oven, we take the plugs out. Sometimes water gets inside of the tanks, and when its heated to an extreme, it builds up a lot of pressure. I got a VERY bad burn on my forearm and chest when removing a plug. It bursted out like a bullet followed by steam so hot it seared my skin, and knocked me backwards nearly 10ft. Needless to say, they now use metal valve plugs instead of plastic ones.
Those old steam engines were no joke. They took incredible skill to operate safely and efficiently. I saw another video where a couple of friends were playing a train game, one of them works at a railroad museum driving steam locomotives. He described why one of their creations (a 10% grade downhill-practically a rollercoaster) was a bad idea in real life: "Basically, if your fireman's not on top of it, the crown sheet of the firebox gets exposed, and it instantly expands and slips off the bolts holding it together, and then it becomes a big steam-powered trebuchet. Which is a bad day for everyone involved."
What I think is interesting about this is there are what are effectively one or more bolts in the top of the firebox called fusible plugs, they have a lead core which will melt if water levels in the boiler drop and the temperatures get to high, if the lead core melts then enormous amounts of steam will spray out into the firebox alerting the crew to the dangerous situation. So how this accident occurred is even more mysterious with this in mind.
I was equally surprised when I heard about the Gettysburg Railroad boiler explosion a few months ago, so did some digging- American practice was not to use fusible plugs, but to use sacrificial crown stays instead, which would cause the crown sheet of the boiler to collapse and perform a similar function, albeit more violently
Not all locomotives had fusible plugs or sacrificial crown sheets. And if with a fusible plug if the locomotive is working hard the crew may not notice that the plug has melted as the draft from the exhaust could draft the steam away from the firebox door. I think a common misconception is that fusible plugs out out the fire, they do not. They act as a warning device and the crew then has to manually drop the fire.
Something worth noting is that this wasn't exclusive to super heated engines, this is something that could theoretically happen to any engine that's steam powered. Lots of images you can find of boiler explosions are shown to have happened on older 1800's styled British steam engines.
Actually, it is not the gaseous steam itself that causes the force of the explosion, at least not directly. In a locomotive fire tube boiler, the volume of steam itself is rather small because the boiler is generally rather full of water, and not capable of driving an explosion of any size. It is the saturated (meaning at the boiling point) water that is "at the ready" to convert into steam the instant the pressure is reduced due to the leakage through a breach. In an accident like this, the entire water content of the boiler will "flash" into steam in a matter of a second or two. It is that massive amount of released steam that causes the explosion. The reason this matters is because over time, steam engineers learned this reality the hard way, and came up with an ingenious way to keep boilers from exploding in accidents. This device is the flash steam generator. They work by simply maintaining the bulk of the water in the boiler _below_ the boiling point by a few degrees. Then the actual steam generation takes place by pumping the water into a long coiled length of tube, where the water is "flashed" into steam in an _on-demand_ fashion. When a boiler of this type experiences a rupture, the small amount of steam in the tube can be released in a benign fashion, and the water remains in it's liquid state, thereby averting the explosive force witnessed here. The fabulous luxury steam car known as the Doble (after the designer Abner Doble) utilized this type of boiler. Naval ships use a type of forced convection boiler along these lines called a Lamont boiler, which could generate steam at five times the rate of simple fire tube or water tube boilers, with an incredible safety margin. They were lighter and faster and represented the pinnacle of steam generation technology.
Bro.... you talk like a politician... you said the exact same thing the video said but you used a different approach.. spent enough time on the railroad to know there is a fancy way of saying something simple, congratulations 🎊
@@christo138 No, I am sorry, but what I said is too complex for a simple mind like yours to understand. This is real physics, not something a railroad worker can grasp. I understand your limitations . . . someday maybe you will too. 😁
@@philroe2363 Nah hes absolutely right, you are a pseudointellectual, and going off your reply an egomanic too. You said that the gasous energy of steam did not cause the explosion, I would remind you that steams only capacity for "energy" is its ability to fill the volume of a container greater than that of its source. You then went on to explain, quite wordily, how heated water turned to steam to do exactly that while also rewriting the videos authors script to have a higher word count. Go touch grass.
That actually fills in a key part of this story, thanks Phil. Very interesting to hear where the engineering ended up - I didn't realise it had gotten as advanced as that.
@@DIYPerks We always like to think that the current generation is superior from past generations. And that's why we are always surprised of the ingenious solutions past engineers came up with But the truth is, past generations were just as smart and ingenious than present generation. We are only where we are today because of the discoveries of our ancestors. And no, we are not standing on shoulders of giants. We are standing on top of a enormous human pyramid and once we pass, those who come after us will stand on top of us.
Just a small correction: @1:20 you show the superheater tubes going into the boiler, but actually they go into the fire tubes (that's why some of the tubes have a larger diameter). Submerging them in water would actually cool the steam instead of superheating it. This also explains how the superheater tubes have been propelled out the front when the firebox burst. The high pressure steam entering the firebox basically shot the superheater tubes out the front like a cannon. The other weak spot out of the firebox was the door into the cab...
Very well done. Most people don't realise that steam is the gaseous form of water and is invisible. The stuff that you can see is actually condensed steam - water vapour. There is an immense energy difference between steam and water vapour. To experience it, all you have to do is boil a kettle and look at what's coming out of the spout. There's a short invisible part and then a visible water vapour part that most people call steam. It's not steam. You can put your hand into the visible part with no problems, but putting your hand into the invisible part could mean a hospital visit. Don't be tempted to try it.
I am a retired stationary operating engineer, and in my training I had to know how to operate an electrical generation station using steam boilers. I can tell that you really did your homework on steam boiler dynamics because everything you stated in this documentary is EXCACLY correct. Bravo Zulu to you, well done!
Well, after watching the video and having it fully explained, I still maintain the belief that the train was secretly an eldritch being in the form of a locomotive.
I really appreciate the amount of work and research you put into each of your videos. Actually explaining some of the technology involved, but not overcomplicating it is also very helpful.
When my company installs a new coal steam boiler, it comes complete with an electronic panels as big as a small car. The electronics could alarm the operators if the pressure and temperature are too much. So not only it relies on relief valves but the company that built and installs it knew that safety is very paramount.
Something about the tendrils of metal sticking out of the train is already freaky. Learning about the backstory though...that's even worse. I love your Last Moments series, you somehow cover topics I've never heard of and it's always both interesting and easy to understand :D
The old ICS report was available online and the head end brakeman survived long enough to say what happened. The hogger was running the loco around 20 mph, pulling hard up a grade and they ran about 10 miles without water in the glass. The firebox would not have been protected by the water, overheated, became weak and failed. Other old ICS reports of other boiler explosions have listed the water level (can tell by the burn marks on the steel) being between 15" and 18" below the top of the crown sheet.
Hey, I usually watch RUclips on my TV so I don't get to comment much but I really wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your work. I've worked in TV, radio, internet, etc. media since 1979 and you have got a great natural delivery and on-screen personality. I hope you're killing online and that YT sends you lots of money every month. You more than deserve it, mate. And no this isn't an April Fool's joke, just random timing. LOL
The pipes sticking out unironically give me the creeps, like demons trying to escape out of the underworld , I also wonder how did the person taking this picture just be like, “oh, that just happened”
This photo invokes the same feelings in me as seeing photos of graphite blocks, fuel containing materials, etc. all over the ground and roof after the Chernobyl explosion, as well as the few photos we have of the reactor cap turned on its side, resting in the rubble.
Great channel, I'm watching all the shows. I'm currently living in Columbus Ohio, not 45 minutes or so from Chillicothe where the above story took place, reminding me of when my late grandfather told me about having to use railroad trains before and after he was in the Navy in Guam. I love history stories and this channel is awesome
in my country where I worked thirty years ago a boiler exploded in a tobacco company, it traveled three kilometers through concrete buildings ripping right through them like knife in a butter killing eight people injuring three, I heard the incident and saw the aftermath. It was like a war zone, as if a missile was fired from a jet or so. RIP all the dead.
Chillicothe/Athens are neat little towns and there's a ton of railroad history here in OH. Glad to hear such a familiar story on this channel. Great content as usual man
Truly an Ohio moment Edit: sorry for got to edit after a month. I am really sorry to those who I had offended. Also, may the crew and passengers who were involved rest in peace.
Great video. My father used to work at a milk factory in the small town where I grew up, & as it was a fairly old factory, much of it's operations were run by an old steam boiler, it's fire being lit very early every morning & wood being put on the fire & pressures monitored for most of the working day. It did have a perfectly functional emergency release valve for pressure build up, but I remember mt Father being agitated on days when others were working there and, on occasion, the valve would pop off, releasing a loud burst of steam that could be heard around the town. They were being too complacent he felt & not keeping the pressures checked by controlling the fire & so forth, because, as he put it, if one day that emergency release were to fail, & no-one checked the gauges in time, that boiler would go off like a bomb & take half the damn town with it. Steam boilers are no joke!
This event occurred in 1948, not 1943 as I state in the video. Sorry for the mistake.
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april fools
Don't ever make a mistake like that again
@@Slugfucker Yeah, we'll let it slide this time. LOL
@@Slugfucker he has been WARNED
get a job!
for anyone unaware, it was actually steam that blew the lid off the core in chernobyl in a similar fashion. the forces behind pressurized steam or air is nothing to downplay.
Very similar disasters, differences being down to scale and whether uranium was involved. I knew I couldn't be the only one getting deja vu.
Everyone keeps saying steam, but anything under pressure can end badly.
@@freshrot420 England during a penalty shootout
Why
Didn't Chernobyl go prompt critical, thus producing a small atomic explosion
I’m a retired stationary steam engineer. That’s the best explanation of how a boiler works I’ve heard. Very easy for the average person to understand.
Edit: Thanks for all the likes. God Bless y’all.
Concerning the diagram, the super heater tubes really want to be inside the fire tubes or else they're going to be cooling the steam in water.
Still a good effort if one only has a week to put the whole video together.
Did you work privately? Haven’t seen a stream train in ages !
@@luker6894 stationary steam can mean a boiler for industrial processes, such as power stations, or for running parts of a plant that produces things for food. Not necessarily a locomotive.
@@luker6894 If you come to Rockaway Beach Oregon, there is a steam train that runs daily. It was the same engine used in the Stephen King film Stand By Me.
Steam engineer wtt those exist?
Man what? Man you must be ancient or something.
I'm currently an apprentice steam loco engineer, and not gonna lie, that was probably the best explanation of a loco boiler- simple for all to understand but not skipping detail!
I didn’t get it
Those still exist?
@@Baelor-Breakspear what didn't you get?
@@tony_5156 Yup- on a heritage steam railway, keeping the old locos alive for future generations!
Any suggestions for someone who is buying a lathe for building steam engines for my farm, I bought kozo hiroko's building a new shay and climax book
My late Dad Donald was a boiler tender on oil tankers right after WW2. He first served on the USS Tolevana then went to the USS Manity. He had many story's. It got really tricky in heavy rough seas as the water would slosh around the boiler. The fire had to be adjusted when the water left the view window cause the boiler would go red hot fast. Then when the water sloshed back on the overheated boiler plate a steam explosion was possible. Between wars he had a mostly smooth 3 year tour. But exposed to a constant snow of asbestos did him no favors. Rough sea made it bad. Testing the big deck guns above the boiler room shook clouds of asbestos from everything. By 60 he was haveing serious lung scarring breathing trouble. They removed hardened parts of his lungs to give the better parts room to breath around 65. He passed at 70 after long diminishing lungs, oxygen support and hospitalizations. He looked more like 95. Asbestos is terrible stuff. 3 years service, up to his marriage in 1950 was what did him in years later in 1999. R.I.P. Dad.
May he rest in peace.
@@stratonarrow Thank you friend. He went out with full honors. Big gathering, Hearse procession, with the Harley cop trikes stopping traffic, Bugle taps, 21 gun salute, Roses to put on the casket and some to keep. I had 2. One pressed in a navy book. And one that got dry and brittle so I put it in a long test tube. He was in between ww2 and Korea so he toured the world in his tankers. Free from combat but he died due to the clouds of asbestos in the engine room. No mesothelioma. But serious lung scarring. Unfortunately he smoked and worked in an auto body shop. So the deck was stacked against him.
Source ?
@@elxse4478 All the steam pipes and boilers were covered with asbestos insulation. So an engine room was coated with the stuff. Sprayed on and blanket type rolls, it wasn't hard to disturb it with vibrations, and shocks. If the ship isn't moving and you don't breath, it was perfectly safe. But the 5 inch cannon drills on the stern felt like pile drivers on the room. That's when it got cloudy with dust fast. I don't know if face filters we're available or not. Likely when it's applied but not during operation. There was still ignorance and denial concerning Asbestos risks. I think high exposure caused scarring and hardening of the lungs before mesothelioma or cancers take hold. Lesser exposure is where lung cancer popps up.
Did you ever notice your dad not wearing pants? Have you considered he may have been thee Donald Duck?
Here’s a story - the first ever boiler explosion in America was a locomotives named “Best Friend of Charleston.” In 1831, the fireman was annoyed at a whistling noise coming from the boiler, so he tied down the value that was giving off steam (some records also say he was sitting on it to make it stop). Now, what valve was it that was leaking? None other than the safety valve meant specifically to release excess pressure. So, he ties it down and goes on his duty only for the entire boiler to explode, killing him and only him. Obviously, the public was horrified at the idea they could be killed in such a gruesome way. So what does the railroad do? Throw a single wagon of cotton between the engine and passenger, that’ll save them from the explosion and the burning coals and the… oh wait no it won’t.
Sometimes, all a reaction needs be is 🤦🏻♀️ (in both cases! Whistling is the most blatant sign of steam getting out there is! Kettles on stoves anyone!? Of course the company acted like that, it's essential that you lose all common sense when becoming a higher-up in any industry.)
As long as people didn't/don't do any stupid things like that there usually isn't any danger. That cart of cotton was just to put people at ease. Of course the engineers, upper management, and anyone with the slightest of knowledge on that subject would've known that.
Those were some nice facts though. Thanks.
I'd say the company was giving their clientele piece of mind. They know if the boiler blows everyone on board is fubar'd, but their clients don't know that. Let me sum it up this way, you think the airline seat cushion that's absorbed the farts from your rear end and all other rear ends that have ever sat on it alone is going to keep you afloat long enough to get rescued?
Some accounts have the fireman sitting on the safety valve to silence it. Not exactly sure how that works, but now you have the choice of imagining the first fatality on an American railroad literally being caused by a man's butt. A literal dumb ass, if you will.
*valve*
The “Chillicothe Steam Explosion” is so obscure, yet so iconic. Was blown away when I saw this in my RUclips feed. I love your content
Blown away? Too soon bro
@@Baelor-Breakspear Yeah, his insensitive comment got me steamin'.
@@user-ellievator fucking love your name and picture gahaha
I’ve been to that town 100 times.. so many blacks, no one should ever go
@@dowkinners4106 what does it mean?
My late father was an engineer in the Royal Navy. One day he walked through an invisible jet of high pressure superheated steam that was escaping from a tiny fracture in a pipe. His ankle passed through the jet and as it did so, his flesh was sliced down to the bone. He spent a few months in hospital recovering and for the rest of his life he walked with a limp.
Superheated steam is insanely dangerous.
My dad worked in a power plant. This plant had two steam turbines. He told me several times that if he ever heard a loud whistling that meant that superheated steam was leaking somewhere. Since it's invisible he said the way to find the leak was to get a broomstick and slowly walk along waving it all around. When the broomstick got cut in two the leak was found.
@@realityquotient7699 Or nowadays use FLIR cameras
@@Tokaisho1 Bear in mind I'm 53 and my Dad was born in 1927.
Besides, do you want to take ALL the excitement and suspense out of life?
@@realityquotient7699 I suppose you're right, using a broom is more exciting lol
Pigeons would have been safer lol
As a boiler technician in the Us Navy for 6 years, you know full well what could happen. I knew several who were killed by steam leaks. The Iwo Jima comes to mind
In the railway museum in York they tell you the story of a steamtrain where something like this happened, I think around 100+ years ago, but I wasn't able to find any information of it. Anyway the situation was there was a medium steam leak in the engine room and going in there would kill you very quickly. The crew had managed to escape but the train was still moving at speed and were trying to work out what to do. They knew that they were going too fast, and worked out that at the next platform there would still be a train changing passengers etc. and that if nothing changed, their train would crash into it and it would be a huge catastrophe killing many, many people. It literally brings tears to my eyes thinking about it, as it has just done now, but those brave train drivers opted to sacrifice themselves by going back into that engine room and doing everything in their power to stop the train, which they did successfully and saving the lives of countless peoples and avoiding what would have been probably one of the largest train crashes in British history. They of course died in excrutiating pain in the process, being scalded to death by the steam. Absolute heros, and I think about this quite often whenever I doubt the integrity of human beings.
@@Happyfaceshockvery interesting story!
I remember the Iwo Jima Boiler explosion. I was deployed on the Okinawa (LPH-3). Our boiler was well beyond the cert date, so we were immediately sent to Subic for critical maintenance.
Let me clear some things up about the Evil vagina (Iwo Jima). I will try to make this short.
I was an MM2 on the Iwo, in 1972-3. While fixing a leak on a main steam line, I sent a guy to get me some new nuts for the job. He came back with the right size and threads, but it was made of black anodized brass. Main steam line bolts take heat treated steel nuts, not brass! (Shortened part) we looked and couldn't find the right nuts, we reused (after some reworking) the original nuts. In the process, we found that those (brass) nuts ONLY fit on main steam lines! No application for them on ANY low pressure/temperature equipment! I started, randomly, getting working parties to throw the brass nuts overboard. There was that ONE guy! I wound up being placed on report for destruction of government property, I explained what was going on. I was told to stop (actually several times!) I told people then, that those nuts were gonna get somebody killed!
They let me off the hook, when I decided to reenlist just to get off that damn ship! When I left, they gave me 2.0 evals! F'ed up my orders to my new ship (wound up getting way better orders!😊).
That steam leak was predicted many years before it happened, and never should have happened!
In case you're wondering, yes, it pisses me off to no end!
Just the pipes sticking out like that is just.. creepy, and gives me chills
It's creepy, it's Ohio
@@itzzwuulferz8296 the most boring day in Ohio
@@itzzwuulferz8296 imagine if this engine has a face
normal days in ohio:💀💀💀💀
Agreed
When I saw that image, I knew what happened to the crew. They died horribly. Steam is not tamed willingly, it must be tended very carefully. Great video.
@@smeggiamagarwine they still died is the point to take from that lol
@@smeggiamagarwine I'd rather get impaled than have my flesh drip off my bones.
You must pat the steam
@@smeggiamagarwine And a big difference between Steam Burns an regular Burns is that Regular Burns just sear off your nervs so the pain is over rather quickly. Steam Burns on the other don't do that, no matter how severe they are. So you feel everything from the begining till the end. Most of the Steam Burn victims don't become uncuncious either. It's truely one of the most horrific deaths you can imagin.
@@smeggiamagarwine high powered steam can easily slice through you like butter, so kinda like being impaled
The part that needs emphasizing is that a boiler explosion isn't just the steam in the boiler sorta leaking out, it's the instantaneous flash of all the water from it's critical state to steam, which expands in volume by about 2000 times, releasing a lot of stored heat energy as kinetic energy in doing so. And traditionally, a substance transitioning from one state to a gas while expanding greatly and releasing a great deal of energy is called an explosion.
A steam locomotive boiler of that size at 300PSI/450C contains the equivalent energy of about 45,000 kg of TnT. This reserve is usually spent gradually and safely, working in the cylinders. But when the boiler ruptures, it's all released at once. Not something to disrespect in the slightest, but not something a lot of people really understand.
So this is what happens when a water heater flys through someones house roof like a rocket.
Your numbers seem kind of high. 45 t of TnT would mean, that the energy of around 7 t of coal would have to be stored in the water and most steam locomotives only carried 4-18 t of it.
Also the water in the boiler is not supercritical.
@@mathewcherrystone9479 maybe i dropped a number doing the enthalpy. I was basing it on the dimensions of a T1 boiler and the formula from Ralph Johnsons's "The Steam Locomotive".
It's a remarkable amount of energy, regardless.
@@stev3548 Yes definitely. Everything under high pressure, that either is a gas/vapor or will turn into one, if the pressure vessel fails, is basically a bomb.
When a boiler experiment a rupture, the sudden pressure drop makes part of the superheated steam condense back into water drops and throw them at high speed to the leaking point. The mass and speed of the water drops deal a lot of damage to the boiler walls, weakening the whole thing and making the explosion even worse.
To put that power in perspective; on 17th November, 1943, the boiler of a freight locomotive exploded near Honeybourne, Worcestershire, England. The chimney (smoke stack) was a thick-walled iron casting, about 20-24" in diameter, and about 48" long. It was found about *three-quarters of a mile* from the wreck. And, bear in mind, the likelihood is that rather than travelling horizontally away from the blast, its initial path was more likely to have been steeply upwards; if so, how high it went is anyone's guess.
The loco was an S-160 Class 2-8-0, engine + tender weight 276,500 lbs (125.4 tonnes), far smaller than the 2-10-4 C & O T1, which weighed 981,000 lbs (445 tonnes).
The S-160 was designed by the USA Transportation Corps, and shipped over by the hundred to England, for onward shipping to Europe after D-Day. The official enquiry found that the cause was low water in the boiler, and suggested that the crew had been mislead by a valve on the water gauge glass sticking when it was only partly open, so the fireman thought it was in fact fully open (as it is in normal working). British engines invariably used a simple on/off stop valve, which turns through 90 degrees from fully shut to wide open, so giving the crew a clear visual indication of the valve's position - but the S-160 had multi-turn ball valves, which appear the same whether open or closed. After close inspection, it was found that the valve in question had a slightly bent spindle (not due to damage in the explosion), which jammed the valve from further movement when only partly open.
A steam loco is, in all but name, a self-propelling bomb - and crews forget that at their peril. A point which was ruthlessly pounded into me when I worked as a fireman on steam locos.
That's so fascinating! Thanks for sharing
The “power” in these steam systems is outrageous - we kind-of assume these older technologies must be weaker, but it’s not so. These harness huge forces and are generally safe. But when they fail, they do so catastrophically.
Pretty much everything we use to generate power today is a steam engine. Coal, oil, uranium.......... just different ways to generate steam.
@@RandomStuff-he7lu It amazes me how such simple concept can power the entire world.
@@RandomStuff-he7lu - This is a great point, that the differences in these plants are just different ways to create the heat to make steam. I really hope we humans can add fusion to this list someday - the abandonment of expanding nuclear energy (not for the worst reasons, granted) in the US is really a shame and has kept us burning rocks and dinosaur juice to make this heat for too long, in my opinion anyway.
@@RandomStuff-he7lu doesn’t the thorium nuclear reactor use molten salt to transfer the heat.
OFC the harness great power. They push trains and rail cars filled with thousands of pounds of weight. Always have been.
I’d never seen the actual insides of a steam locomotive despite my childhood fascination with them, so just seeing all those pipes sticking out of it seemed like an eldritch horror crawling out of the locomotive
That was pretty much my thoughts when i seen the thumbnail
.
Perhaps there is a department at Miskatonic University for dealing with such elder or other-worldly 'steam' gods.
When stem ain't enough you gotta put sum eldritch horror inside one of those big boys, they surely will get the work done!
Same
From my first impression, I actually thought this was gonna be a story where the crew had been riding the train cross country, went insane, and had stuck all that to the front and were incoherent when they were finally found if not dead, but knowing the real story, what it is, and how they died, that, being real, is actually a damn sight more terrifying. And I have a vivid imagination, so when he described the blind brakeman claiming he begged the other two to put more water in just before he died, I just.... dear god thats both a heart breaking and terrifying site to imagine, much less see for real..... I'm fairly certain the people that recovered this wreck and the crew, didn't sleep well for many many nights....
As a railfan I'm impressed with how well researched this video was, especially for a non-train-oriented channel. He was able to properly describe how a steam locomotive worked in laymen's terms without making it feel childish, even discussing the process of superheating steam (which most non-train channels don't even think about covering). He also nailed the locomotive identification, which again, most channels gloss over. Great job Qxir, you've earned the railfan stamp of approval!
how much do you know about rail fasteners? I'm very confused by the plates and clips shown in this picture. It looks like plates meant for only spikes but there are clips somehow attached? I don't see any slots to install them, it almost looks like the clips are welded to the plates themselves
The superheater graphic was all totally wrong.
@@heinzriemann3213explain it then
@@bloomsux69 the superheater pipes don't go into the water, they go into the smoke pipes.
@@bloomsux69 There is actually a bit of an inaccuracy in the diagram at 1:30 : the pipes of the exchanger go inside the fire tubes of the boiler, not into the water as the diagram would imply. This one illustrates what's going on better: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Locomotive_fire_tube_boiler_schematic_(with_superheater).png
Steam locomotives may be old fashioned technology but they're insanely powerful, and when human error comes into play, that power can be devastating. In 1994 a British steam locomotive called 'Blue Peter' was hauling a special train from Edinburgh to York, but it only got as far as Durham north of York. The inexperienced crew filled the boiler too full and after leaving Durham station the engine slipped and the wheelspin carried water into the cylinders, jammed the steam valve open, and the engine thrashed itself into a wheel spin of 140 miles per hour, causing the side rods to tear off and the cylinders to explode. When the driver tried to wind back the forward-reverse gear it span round and injured him with a broken finger at the least. The track practically melted and had to be replaced, and it took 18 months and hundreds of thousands of pounds to repair the damage. Those who work on steam locomotives today refer to them as "bombs on wheels".
Sounds like it was called Blue Peter as someone had built the train out of sticky back plastic.
@@TheSmart-CasualGamer
Not exactly 😂
This is the real thing 👇
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Peppercorn_Class_A2_60532_Blue_Peter
My Great Grandmother had a story about a similar incident with a distant relative.
According to her, at one point an ancestor of mine was listed as the only person to fly a steam locomotive and survive. The boiler had been run until completely "dry". In other words it was all steam, no water. Due to the extreme risk it was decided to let it cool down without running it at the far edge of the rail yard.
My ancestor drew the short straw and had to ride brakes on this and was in the cab while another locomotive was used to push it out to the chosen spot. At some point in this process the boiler partially ruptured. The rupture was on the bottom of the boiler and the steam rushed out at an angle down and towards the rear, becoming a crude steam rocket. The locomotive became airborne as a result of this new rocket, and flew some distance possibly 90 feet. The landing was a terrifying wreck, injuring my ancestor. He suffered a broken back, an assortment of bruises, burns, scrapes and cuts. Due to fear and adrenaline he was able to get out and run a fair distance away before collapsing.
He was taken to the hospital and after being cared for there for a time, he healed the rest of the way he could at home. He was never able to return to his old job due to the results of the injuries. He could not walk far, had many aches and pains, did not have full use of his hands and so on. He made a living as best as he could by tinkering and making toys and little gadgets to sell.
He would never get on a train for the rest of his life, and would sometimes start shaking uncontrollably when he was close to a running one at a road crossing.
I've read about boiler explosions in a book I have. A number of them were from low water. No one anywhere near was safe if one of them 'went'.
@@ordinaryJeff Add a vast store of pent up energy, iron and steel, heat an season with a lack of understanding of metal fatigue and presto, a particularly horrible explosion.
@@erggml1887 Indeed. The 'mother hubbard' design must have been particularly stressful. Now you have possible steam explosions combined with possible drivetrain failure sending a side rod ripping through the cab on the side.
its kinda hypocritical of me to say this but, paragraphs please and thank you
@@ΆγγελοςΜορίκης-ζ2ω No worries, I have made a few adjustments. It should be less bad now. Saying that it is better would be too much of a stretch though.
I’m an engineer at a high pressure/ superheated steam boiler plant, and this is something that I always keep in the back of my mind.
I didn t understand why the lack of whater made the boiler explode
@@francocervera8984 overheating
@@francocervera8984 The water cools down the fire box and without the water the firebox will melt and the steam will become superheated; explosive
@@francocervera8984 when water turns to steam, it expands to about 1700 times its size. When a boiler ruptures, the pressurized steam/water immediately flashes to superheated steam (superheated is steam who's temperature is above it's corresponding pressure. That immediate expansion is a bomb. If the boiler is dry fired (no water), there is nothing to keep the shell and tubes cooled, therefore it becomes pliable and compromised. An example of the importance of water- take a paper cup filled with water. Place it on your BBQ or open fire. The cup will not melt and only burn down as the water evaporates in it .
@@aaoh212 thank you man
That's definitely one of the creepiest photos I've seen in a long time. Without explanation or context, it's chilling. It almost looks like a photoshopped image you'd seen in a "top 10 scary photos" clickbait video. But it's real. The pipes like terrifying insect-esque appendages ripping out of a cabin where people were just doing their job.
This is what I was thinking as well. Before hearing the explanation of what happened, it was very chilling. Those pipes look so grotesque, almost otherworldly. I just kept thinking, "what did they hit? What could have done this?" It does look surreal.
To me, at first glance, that photo looks like something out of Lovecraftian horror where some unknown Omnipotent monster is using this train as a portal to violently enter our reality!
@@nickpapadopoulos9978 it does look pretty Lovecraftian now that you mention it.
Alien appendages for real.
taken out of the steam boiler context and observed by someone who knows few about steam locomotive,
the pipes looks that way due to the fact most people dont associate steam locomotives with a bunch of pipes,
so the appearance of a bunch of wriggling pipe sprawling from inside a locomotive comes off as uncanny and unnerving
As a lad in the mid 1950s, I remember seeing a loco that had suffered the same fate, only the backhead had blown out. I was mightily impressed by the damage I could see from closeup track side but I imagine the cab interior would have been hell on earth for a split second.
I still have the image of that wrecked engine in my mind.
While after the end of WW2, there were many trains that did detonate in a similar fashion between 1940 to 1945. Most due to insufficient servicing. Many trains would pull into station with cargo, be turned right back around with coal and water refilled and some minor lubrication. Trainman once told me that a locomotive need major service every 1,000 hours of use. During the war, most trains were taken to 5,000 to 10,000 hours. The older the train, the higher the likelihood of catastrophic failure.
Part of the reason is they were owned by the government during both wars and they weren't concerned about servicing them.
@@needsmetal The government ran the railroads during WW1 when the railroad companies couldn’t get the job done. The government DID NOT run the railroads during WW2 as the companies, having learned their lesson from WW1; fully cooperated w/each other during WW2. Please get your facts straight before posting such gibberish & non-facts.
Not only that, but even though they could be considered essential to the war effort & not drafted, many younger crew members still served in the military. As a result, women took their place.
@@jamessimms415 Everyone was expected to help. My grandmother was in her teens and was expected to go to dances and socials to help with morale. Chicago was the last stop before boarding ships at Soldier Field or moving on to New York.
As for trains, my great great grandfather helped lay rail in Pennsylvania and Ohio, worked his way up to a mechanic position during the 1880s to 1906. After which, he took a job working at the first Olds dealer in Chicago. Early on in WW1, he had to go back to working a roundhouse in southern Chicago. Smelled of coal and rendered pig fat, from what I was told. He'd have to get inside the firebox, perform maintenance, replace piping and pressurize the system with steam from another train. On the outside, you had to test all the pistons, rings, wheels and the scrape off all the oil grease before slathering on that pig fat using a mop.
@@jamessimms415 You say that as if there were no catastrophic failures during WW1.
I’m a Steam and Thermal Energy Engineer and this is an excellent and simple explanation of what happens if the level of water in a Fire Tube Boiler isn’t correct.
If you’re OK with it, I’d like to use your video for educational purposes.
What happens:
The tubes with the hot air overheat because of lack of water to cool, they melt and let an overflow of hot air directly into the water that still is in the boiler. That way most of the water immediately turns to steam, taking more space than is available, since steam has 1600 times more volume than water. The effect is a very powerful explosion that is not caused by combustion of a medium, but by expansion of one. With devastating results. Steam will instantly boil the flesh off your bones. Also superheated steam isn’t visible, which makes it tricky. Luckily superheated steam, when superheated enough, doesn’t easily transfer its energy, as saturated steam does, so it is more likely burns will occur from saturated steam than superheated steam.
This also happened to steam boilers in industrial use causing them to be blown of their fundament, taking everything down in its way, even concrete walls. That’s why automatic level monitoring in redundant setup is obliged today.
Spot on! Retired nuke plant ops here, and a stationary engineer. Our plant design is the only kind that uses superheated steam. I've seen the broomstick cut-in-half thing a number of times. You have to respect the stuff, that's for sure.
Correct me if I am in error but the firebox is more less at atmospheric pressure while the steam is at high pressure/ Low water levels means the fire tubes and crown sheet )top of the firebox) overheat and soften. At some point the crown sheet / tubes can not withstand the pressure and rupture. At that point the steam being at high pressure will tend to blow back through the firebox and blow the fire along with superheated steam right back into the cab. If there is a massive crown sheet or tube failure you could launch the whole boiler..
In the accident scene above it looks' to me like the smoke box (front of the locomotive) failed and the cab was intact. To me that would indicate some sort of blow-back through the firebox is what scalded the crew
@@gerry5712 There are a few things wrong with his Dee's explanation; if a boiler tube failed you'd have steam at high pressure inside the boiler looking to get out, not hot air looking to get in. Also no practical amount of hot air getting into the boiler would boil all the water immediately, the amount of energy required just would be far more than the air can carry. Doesn't make much sense to me.
No. Hot air will not over flow directly into the water. The highly pressurized water escaping will be forcing air out of the way. The hot air is not under any pressure.
@@ld4244 I reread my comment and realized I did make it look like the air boils all the water in the boiler, which isn’t possible because of the amount of energy that would take. I guess that’s the price for typing a comment hastily on a phone.
The point I tried to make was that indeed the tube that is not in the water when the level is too low, will get soft and rupture. The boiler mostly is pressurized between 10 - 12 barg. (I have to assume with steam trains it’s the same as industrial boilers) That means there is water fluid at 180 to 188 degrees Celsius. The firebox and the tubes obviously are not under that much pressure, it might be slightly more than atmospheric pressure, but not that much. If the tubes melt an opening occurs to atmospheric pressure. The pressurized water will flash to steam immediately when it gets out to atmospheric pressure, which will give the effect I meant. That would also give a blow back effect into the fire box indeed, where hot gas and saturated steam will be entering the cabin with obvious results for the crew.
So the sudden pressure drop will cause the water to flash into steam, expanding 1600 times, which acts like an explosion basically.
High pressure steam is scary. I'm surprised incidents like this aren't more common
They where quite common in the early days of steam. Drivers would sometimes screw the safety valve cover down more than it should have been to get a bit more power. This didnt often end well.
They aren’t more common because 99% of drivers and firemen know what they’re doing
in germany some steam accidents caused the formation of a regulatory body now known as the TÜV.
And the fact that proper dry steam is invisible in most conditions when leaking and can burn or even cut you if you happened to expose your skin to it accidentally..
They aren't more common because steam locomotives are really safe, what makes accidents like this happen is gross incompetence from an engineer/ mechanics. A bit like what goes for planes.
Never researched how steam locomotives function until now. The simplicity of design of these old machines is fascinating.
The boiler itself is incredibly simple in design. The core ideals have not really changed for hundreds of years. The complexity comes from putting a boiler on top of wheels and sending it down the track at high speeds.
The part that is not covered super well in this video is it's not a lack of water going up an incline that probably did it in, it's the change from level track to an incline that caused the explosion. It's likely the crew was trying to build up as much steam as possible by not adding fresh water but let the level get too low and the crown sheet (top of the boiler) became uncovered by water. This let the crown sheet get extremely hot due to their no longer being water keeping it cool. The problem this causes is as soon as the train starts up the incline, the water level in the boiler slants back which would then cover the red hot crown sheet with water again. This instantaneously flashes all the water that makes contact with it to steam which rapidly expands in volume and well.... boom.
@@Kboyer36 from a physics perspective that's similar to what happened at Chernobyl in 1986. The water in the loop flashed off to steam, exploding and then with no more water to regulate the heat the reactor contents melted down and a hydrogen explosion occurred.
@@NavelOrangeGazer Pretty much. Never underestimate the power of steam expanding.
My old engineer tutor explained a small boiler steam explosion "Id rather be in a room filled with a natural gas leak and strike a match. The super heated water when it expands escapes from the fail point and as water droplets at that speed and state struggle to malform and will not compress you might as well be stood infront of a Claymore mine. It will flay the flesh from your bones. This is why we have separate temperature and pressure relief valves."
Elequently put!
Same chap when some lads were improperly using a grinding wheel said "When a chunk breaks off and goes into your groin and you have to tell your girlfriend shes never having kids with you, dont say you werent warned."
His health & safety briefings were one sentence that you never forget! He knew just how to put fear and sense into daft young lads to get results.
Boiler explosions used to be a major issues for steamboats and trains back in the day when few had an understanding of engines worked. From the mid-1800s to around 1900 you can find hundreds of stories of these terrifying stores. It because some an issue the problem made it’s way to the Halls of Governments on ways to prevent the accidents.
Like "Sultana"
Yeah back in 1911 there was an old steam boat that sank near my home town from a boiler explosion with one person killed
@@PhantomEagle.. Sultana's accident could've been avoided if the captain had kept the boat in port to have the boiler properly repaired rather than a temporary job. The boat was also overloaded so the boilers would've been worked harder than normally.
@Hannah As opposed to socialism? Which has a worse track record?
Sorry if I burst your bubble comrade.
Why the fuck are you guys talking about politics in a video about a boiler explosion I like to get political myself, but only in political comment sections. Now shut up about politics and get on topic
The picture itself is SCP Material. It gives you uneasy feelings and creepy vibes.
@@king_vasuki2692 SCP #??
@@justarandomyoutubeviewer2749 SCP-3179
Doesn’t use the same image, but similar idea
The Seed
that's what I've been thinking. since the replies indicate that there is one, I'll check it out.
The first thing I thought when I saw it was The Broken God
Many years ago, I worked on preserved steam locomotives in the UK, eventually getting to the level of Fireman - the guy who's responsible for the fire, water and steam levels on the engine. Always a balancing act to keep a good fire, good pressure and water levels, but I had the best teacher and a good friend who showed me all the tricks - Driver Keith. The trickiest part was often the injectors - the way you get water into the boiler, overcoming the pressure with nothing more than the steam pressure from the boiler. They used a very clever series of cones to accelerate the steam, collect the water and force it into the boiler. Some could be.... temperamental, and it was always a relief when they 'caught' and the water level would increase. If the injectors stopped working you were in serious trouble! The boilers of the engines I worked on had 'boiler plugs', made from a metal with a lower melting point than the steel of the boiler casing, so they would fail first, release the pressure and stop a catastrophic explosion if ever the water level got too low, exposing the 'crown' of the boiler/firebox.
There's also the safety valve, which was set to lift at a certain pressure above the normal operating pressure - with GWR boilers that was usual 250lbs/sq inch. Boilers had to be tested and would receive a certificate before they could be used on an engine.... I saw one being tested where the safety valve got stuck and wouldn't lift, and the pressure put the needle against the stop on the gauge, and carried on rising! Some brave soul (not me!) volunteered to climb onto the boiler and prize it open with a large nail, which worked with an ear-splitting roar and a plume of steam shooting hundreds of feet into the air!
Happy days!
I was born, raised and still live in Chillicothe and never heard this story. Thanks, fascinating stuff!
Well that happened a long time ago
Maybe they didn't want to kick up dead memories to send the citizens into state of worry
I haven't heard many people not from Ohio pronounce Chillicothe correct either lol
@@BloodPlusPwn I got so excited when I heard that! I live in Cincinnati not Chillicothe, but I do know how to pronounce it 😂
Born in Chillicothe too and never heard this story.
Honestly, the picture looks far more horrific not knowing what happened.
Mark Twain's brother, in fact, was killed in a boiler explosion like this, except on a riverboat. Twain always felt guilty for this death because he was supposed to be working in his brother's place on the boat at the time of the disaster but was earlier thrown off as a result of an argument (and physical altercation) with the boat's captain.
Wasn’t his brother’s death what lead him to some of his stories?
@@FishVirus I think indirectly. After The accident Twain didn't want to work on riverboats anymore, so he had to find other occupations, which lead him to writing.
Some final destination type shit
This may be one of the best descriptions of how a steam engine actually functions that wasn't made by a train focused channel. Excellent video!
I was a boiler tech in the U.S.Navy on a destroyer (U.S.S Cone DD866 ) We all knew in the "hole" that a rupture of a down comer, the 3 inch generating tubes inside the boiler (M Type) would empty the 15,000 gallons of water into the space as steam in about 9 seconds, with no chance of survival. Once a one inch tube burst in the forward boiler room, two spaces ahead. We could hear it all the way back in our space, and assumed the worse had happened. Fortunately because of the smaller diameter of the ruptured tube most of the steam emptied into the fire box and up the stack. There were no injuries. I knew that if I were to die in Viet Nam it would be by boiling alive, not a bullet. Thanks to all Veterans for their service!
The metal tubing of a steam train’s engine splayed out after an engine explosion like an angel’s wings is truly a haunting sight, and the death caused by any responsible for said accident, intentionally or otherwise, is truly horrific. It’s not often that an image strikes such dread and fear into the viewer without any context.
I thought it was a creepy Photoshop while scrolling
It's almost like seeing an animal with it's guts and insides piling out, disturbing if you think about it
I remember this photo! My father was a huge train nut, and he would always tell me romantic stories about these beautiful old engines. And also, the not so beautiful aspects. I distinctly recall how he described this tragic incident to me as a child.
_"Boiled to death by the steam."_ To this day, just the thought alone makes me shudder.
This picture is especially horrifying when you compare it to the picture of the undamaged version. More than half of the train was blown away by the explosion.
I worked with high pressure boilers at a refinery and for safety, if the water level got low the fuel valves would shut. Obviously, on this vintage equipment, such safety measures weren't around. Also, the steam brakes on the earliest trains took steam pressure to close the brakes. IOW if you lost steam pressure, your brakes failed open and the train would run away and it actually happened and from that incident, the brakes were re-engineered so that it took steam pressure to open the brakes. This way, if they lost steam pressure, the brakes would slam shut, stopping the train. But, it took an accident and loss of life for them to realize their engineering mistake.
I seem to recall that Westinghouse was instrumental in creating some innovative modifications to early train designs, one of them was braking systems.
From my experience with similar stories in modern times even, its not that they had to realize their mistakes, they tend to be fully aware of them but don't take those who warn them seriously until something really bad happens and they can't ignore it anymore for publicity and legal reasons. There normally is always at least one highly qualified person who is aware of an issue and warns of it right from the start who then is ignored until the problem gets too large to ignore. It was the same story with leaded fuel, with cigarette smoking, with nuclear power (although there was an incident prior to chernobyl that actually would have been just as bad but it's impact was significantly reduced thanks to a nuclear engineer who's warnings were reluctantly heeded) and many other things. Obviously whenever warnings are heeded, we rarely hear about it, so it creates a sort of bias. Mostly people actually design things pretty well.
Air brakes in big trucks have the same story. Back in the day the brakes were released by default and it took air pressure to apply them, which meant if there was loss of air for any reason the only way to stop a truck was through engine braking (which usually meant the truck went runaway). In modern trucks it's the reverse, it takes air to release the brakes. A truck can still go runaway for various reasons, usually by overheating brakes to inoperability, but at least there's a bit of a warning and grace period before all hell breaks loose.
Today, all engines with explosion/fire hazard have 'fail Safe ' interlocking.
I know a case in which an algorithm error that went un-noticed for a long time, resulted in explosion one day.
@@nocensorship8092 Very true. Its the concept of.
"By the time this goes wrong, ill be dead and buried, and it will be someone elses issue to resolve."
Its super common in the programming world. Easier to do something the quick way and have someone else fix it up years down the line when issues arise from the quick fix.
You should do a video on the "Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway". The Worlds Smallest public railway. The owner being a former race car driver and millionaire, who had a interesting way of running the line, including an armoured train used to defend the line from the German air force in WW2. Would be a fun video
YES.
YES.
YES.
he could even mention how during ww2 a german plane crashed bc he didnt realise it was a miniatutre railway.
More trains
yes
That sounds like an amazing Tales From The Bottle topic
Ive been on this train as a kid. My dog fell in the canal as she thought the water lilies growing on the surface was dry land!
Bless her, she was a good dog :)
Used to work at a park with an old steam engine and if the train didn't go in time, they'd shut the whole thing down, blow out the steam, and start over. Guests would complain at me and I would answer "Sorry for the inconvenience." While my brain is going "You have no clue what a BLEVE is, do you, and I rather keep my skin than have it boiled off..."
To put it in perspective Qixr, As a high pressure boiler operator and Master Plumber. An average residential 40 gallon water heater, if altered by, say, capping off a leaking relief valve that's dripping. Has easily the potential, upon explosion to go from the basement, through the roof of a two story home. And that's peanuts to the kind of pressure we're talking here. Love the channel
Thats mindblowing, the amount of power that must have been behind this accident.
For sure,hot water heaters can kill you,probably the most dangerous thing in your house
@@davidconn3222 For sure Dave. In my 36 years as a plumber, I can honestly say that I've personally witnessed dozens of times where a homeowner "fixed" the leak on their water heater, which was water coming out of the runoff tube from the Temperature and Pressure Relief Valve by screwing a brass plug or cap to "stop" it from leaking. These valves are factory set to start dripping at either 150 PSI water force, or 210 degrees water temperature. Since most Americans should remember from grade school that boiling point of water is 212 degrees. I think we can safely agree that the valve can quite literally save your life by avoiding those additional 2 degrees, though they usually are compromised and drip less than 210. They work by spring tension in the valve that will allow water to be released by the tank before danger. In my 12 plus years teaching plumbing schools. I was given OSHA and WH Manufacturers written and even video reports of what can really occur. It's unsettling
@@davidconn3222 To say nothing of Carbon Monoxide from clogged or poorly installed or functioning flue pipes to chimneys or outer air discharge
@Super Mario Thanks for listening to me blather my friend ! William really explains it better than me, I'm sure. I just dig meeting a fellow tradesman in the comments
Oh my god, that image looks like the train's alive and trying to grab innocents with its many hellish tendrils
Some SCP material right there
@@deimos39 was about to say that to. Definitely SCP stuff
@@deimos39 i feel like I've seen an SC0 that uses this picture, but i can't remember it
the boiler tubes desired freedom
@@pennyforyourthots
Broken God I think
I’ve been scalded before. It gave me second degree burns with those ‘bubbles’ on my hand, after a few days of intense burning all over. I immediately had to keep dunking it in water to relieve the pain until it hurt again, then take it out until the burning came back, then repeat the motions. When the hot ass water first came in contact with my flesh, I screamed loud. It hurt that bad. I don’t want to even imagine having that all over my body. Ever.
Me too but I was scalded by gunpowder fire
Had a classmate who accidentally poured boiling water over his armpit and chest, loudest scream i have ever heard him make.
I hate being reminded of how much pain we're capable of feeling
@@thesaddestdude3575 How did he do that? Did he have T-Rex arms or something?
@@hithere7382 You’re insufferable.
I spend the odd Sunday on a heritage railway in New Zealand, and we have a small industrial steam locomotive which we run. I've served as fireman in this little 99 year old loco and it demands constant attention, balancing coal, air and water to maintain a usable pressure. You have to forward plan, nothing happens instantly but it is just a pleasure to control the immense energy our little B10 has, Every time we fire it, we run it up till the safety valve activates (155psi) just to test it's function. It'd be insane not to have it!
I'm sure many already know but for those that don't "super heated steam" isn't like the "wet steam" most people would be familiar with. It's a different beast with some unusual properties relative to what most people think of as "steam"
so.... what makes it different?
@@TheGoopGod the steam heated up a lot more by running it back through the firebox piping before going to the pistons. The steam expands a lot more, so you more energy out of it without giving the boiler itself more pressure.
Superheated steam has a higher level of potential energy. Is isn't visible like saturated steam (albeit a steam leak is extremely loud) and burns are much more severe. Depending on the pressure, putting your hand in a stream of superheated steam would probably blow the flesh of your bones. (For reference I work in a powerplant with 600psi superheated steam boilers).
The steam was so hot that you cannot see it, it is a hot steam that can burn anything even though it was made from water.
Bear in mind: steam remains steam as you get it hotter, all the way to the point where it becomes a PLASMA.
So superheated is anything from 100C all the way to THOUSANDS of C.
"... the blinded brakeman explaining that he had begged the other two crewmembers to put water in the boiler."
The poor man died horribly as a consequence of others' arrogance and incompetence. Sad to say, that sort of injustice will always be with us.
I’m sure you have heard of Casey Jones? He saved his fireman from death by pushing him off the train, instead of jumping and saving himself he stayed at the controls and slowed his train down until it hit the stalled train. He saved many lives so not all train engineers are evil as you’d have us believe.
@@peterf.229 Thank you for the story of Casey Jones. I'm sure there are many admirable and heroic train engineers in the world. My comment was directed at "culpable but unassailable" people in general, not at train engineers. My Dad (RIP, and sorely missed) worked on the railways for several years before winning a bursary to study mechanical engineering.
I would've said, "well,, you dont need a brakeman at this speed", and headed for the caboose.
It has been my experience in life that: accidents don't just happen, they are caused.
Yes so sad
At a first glance this looks like an eldritch horror train, fitting for April fools.
The truth really is worse sometimes...
Well I was hoping to God Qxir wouldn't do a stupid AF video so it's kinda the opposite for me.
It does not surprise me this happened in Ohio.
EDIT: 1st, how did this get 1k likes, 2nd, people still watch this video? 3rd, what is going on in the comments section.
Of course
What's with this Ohio joke?
Can't even have trains in Ohio smh
Only in ohio.
@@tangytango2749Ohio has monsters lol
Very good video, The suffering may not have been as bad as you think. I received 3rd degree steam burns over the top half of my body. Felt nothing but the impact for about 1 hr. Then wow! They usually die from steam inhalation. It scalds the lungs, which blister over inside, then suffocates them. Dead men walking. They knew it, the Railroads knew it, and, if possible, would somtimes get family members to them for last words. They may have 2hrs or so. So, the lesson learned is that if you are trapped in a poisonous cloud, fireball, or steam, resist the natural urge to inhale from fear or pain, close your eyes, or at least one. And get out. Saved me 2x. Whenever im around steam boilers of any kind, even at museums, or shows I trust no one, and, I ALWAYS cast a glance at the water sight gauge first because i know where it should be. THEN the pressure gauge.
Seeing a hole in an engine block bad, but seeing the guts of a steam boiler explosion is gruesome. Being hit with a shock wave of dry steam, followed by wet steam, and then with water. I'm guessing the meat just falls off the bone after that?
I'm amazed none of the crew were impaled by the boiler rods
@@MikeBarbarossa yea imagine trying to get them out and all you see is them hanging on those rods. Imagine what pain that would've been.
@@MikeBarbarossa just imagine if the boiler chamber was at the front and all the rods were blown backwards
@@MikeBarbarossa Depends on the failure. I have seen pictures like this where the back half was blown off and the entire cab was relocated to the other end of the train.
I see now how they were spared form the rods. The crew cabin is in the rear of the engine, and the rods all came out the front
Looks like a expansion of metal roots, so otherworldy
Yeah it looks like something destroyed it
as a rail enthusiast I am happy that stuff like this is being talked about
steam trains are not easy to run
it’s really a horrifying thought. not dying with any friends or family, only at your job and a catastrophic disaster which could’ve been avoided.
Yes
Wrong emoji
@@outerbanks6485 What emoji did you post?
I learned about this event in history class and I believe my teacher knew one of the crew members that had died. From what I remember the main conductor believed this newer style engine could run with little water and was trying to push it past its breaking point to prove the engine wouldnt blown up but clearly it did.
I live very close to where this happened and drive pretty near to where I believe it occurred basically everyday. It's very weird to hear about an event this close to home. So few people around here know about it. The only people I've ever heard talk about it were my great grandparents who remember seeing the aftermath and hearing a distant boom
I live about 15 mins away from where it happened it's crazy.
Where abouts this happen in Chillicothe, I'm outside of laurelville
Such a good explanation. Steam trains are the literal definition of "Take care of me and I'll take care of you".
There was an accident like that in Bulgaria.The level glass was clogged and it wasn't showing that the water level was too low,causing the metal to overheat . The engineer noticed that and decided to add water without realizing that the boiler was nearly empty,causing huge volume of steam to suddenly form and boom.one of the crew members was thrown out by the explosion and survived.the other crew member supposedly was just a bare skeleton,the steam removed everything....
Somebody watched Mark "Hyce" Huber's "Steam 101: 10 Levels of Steam Locomotive Understanding" video. And if not, I highly recommend it. The explanation here is a very good summary (particular kudos for talking about the superheater; not even a lot of steam folks mention that, though the superheater pipes should be passing through the flue tubes, not adjacent to them), so the other video can be thought of as a greater elaboration on what Qxir says here. All very accurate, well done.
Boiler explosions are funny things; you know something's going to go catastrophically wrong, but you never know quite how. Sometimes, like in this incident, the front or back of the boiler will fail and the locomotive will basically vomit itself inside out. Other times, the force of the escaping steam will launch the whole boiler barrel off the frames like a rocket. Maybe all the force is directed straight down and causes the boiler to hop up into the air, which if the train is still moving may cause it to come down and crush the next car behind the locomotive (this happened to a coal mine owner's private train in, I want to say 1916). Rarely you might get lucky and most of the boiler will hold together, with only part of the crownsheet failing and venting steam and superheated water (water heated past the boiling point without vaporizing) out into the cab; this is what befell the crew of the Gettysburg Railroad in 1995. Or, as is the most common, the sudden flash of steam as the superheated water is exposed to atmospheric pressure will cause the entire boiler barrel to simply pop like a giant steel balloon.
I think superheaters are usually not mentioned as not all locomotives have them, you don´t need superheaters for a simple locomotive to work. Though they are what makes the pictures of this incident so interesting.
"Wet steam" locomotives are a heck of a lot easier to maintain and drive.
No replacement of the superheater pipes, the flue tubes(?) are easier to clean, you don´t need special oil for the cylinders (at dry steam temperatures, normal oil would burn and leave a crust inside the cylinders). Also, the loco reacts quicker (because the steam doesn´t have to pass through the superheater to get to the pistons) and it doesn´t freak out should you get water in the superheater (sudden evaporation leads to extra high pressure in the cylinders, causing wheelslip.)
I love wet steam locos. But I´m biased, as efficiency doesn´t really play a role if you´re only driving a few times a year and you´re only pulling 2 cars on level ground. ;D
Even though I already knew all the information, I thoroughly enjoy Hyce's content.
@@PowerTrain611 Same :D
It's amazing to know how dangerous locomotives can be, especially back then. The sheer power they can unleash in the brink of seconds
I operated steam propulsion systems for several years and have a long-term interest in historical steam. The boilers shown--the "rearranged" boilers shown--are all "fire tube" boilers. They have a relatively high volume of hot, pressurized (high energy) water. Thus, they can be quite enthusiastic when given the opportunity. I note that none of the boilers shown appear to have suffered a crown sheet rupture. Instead, portions of the external boiler shell have gone AWOL, leaving their internal spaghetti exposed. Thus, low water level is not necessarily the root cause of the failure.
The crown sheet is the top of the fire box (furnace). If water level gets too low, the crown sheet is the first thing to overheat. An old issue with steam locomotives, and much more-so with steam tractors, was having the water move away from the crown sheet when engine was traveling downhill (rails being relatively level while steam tractors rolled across open fields). The exposed crown sheet would overheat. When the boiler's water once again visited the crown sheet, the extremely hot metal would cause a lot of water to promptly flash to steam. The resulting pressure pulse could rupture the boiler. Heated metal becomes weaker. Thus, in low water failures a common rupture point was the crown sheet (the pressure pulse possibly not being sufficient to overcome the strength of the boiler's shell in general, but now being powerful enough to rip open the top of the overheated and weakened fire box). The return of the water to the crown sheet could be due to feeding new water into the boiler or it could be due to the engine traveling uphill which caused the water to "slosh" back to the firebox. Keeping track of the gauge glass (or monitoring the "try cocks" in even earlier designs... a feature common in early river steamboat boilers) was an important task for the fireman.
A common energy management tactic for dealing with up grades was to increase the boiler level to the high end of the operating range well before reaching a hill. This action depressed boiler pressure (while the colder feed water was heated) when the engine did not need the extra energy, and allowed the feed rate to be cut back (but typically held near or slightly below consumption rate) while the high pressure was needed for the climb. Of course, a lot depended upon just how long the climb was. Feeding new water to keep the crown sheet covered on a down-grade was not an energy issue because gravity was helping them along.
Failures such as shown often occurred because of localized weakness in the pressure shell of the boiler. This could be a rivet, a stay-bolt, the swage joint where a firetube joined the fire box (cab end) or smoke box (front end), a leaky riveted seam, externally caused damage, or simply a localized weakness in a piece of pressure plate. The hot, pressurized water in these boilers produced "saturated" steam immediately above the liquid surface. The water is a reservoir of energy. If pressure drops, more water flashes to steam. When a significant leak develops, especially a prompt leak such as a localized small rupture, the pressure drop leads to a steam flash with a consequent pressure pulse. The event sequence is very rapid. The boiler shell failure would then expand leading to more steam flashing. In the end the boiler is empty and the local atmosphere has experienced a temporary extreme rise in humidity.
There are very good reasons that steam plant operators must pass tests and be licensed.
One imagines it must have been hell when working steam locomotives through the mountains. Beyond brake failure, is this why grades should be (ideally) less than 2%? Your explanation accounts for the fact that pusher locomotives were needed in the mountain regions - not that the hauling locomotives were powerful enough, but that the power was limited
@@jackdunster-x9b A big part of the limit on railroad grade is the coefficient of friction between the steel wheel and the steel rail. The rolling friction of steel on steel is quite low. This is one reason that railroad transport is quite energy efficient. However, the initial traction effort is quite low. Getting a train rolling in the first place (or stopped from speed) can be tricky. Couplers are designed to help the start-up problem (a topic for someone else's video). Video of steam engines pulling out of the yards (or station) from a stopped condition will often show a sudden "break-away" of the wheels on one or both sides. The slow chuff, chuff will suddenly be replaced by a very rapid chuffchuffchuffchuff and spinning wheels without associated increased train velocity. In those cases, the traction effort exceeded the available coefficient of friction. In specific instances, dumping sand on the rails was used to improve local friction/traction (again, someone else's video should cover these details). So grade limit is closely related to the coefficient of steel-on-steel rolling friction.
Stay curious.
Ahhh....saw this thumbnail and instantly knew it was a superheater boiler explosion. When I was a kid growing up in the 1980s I was obsessed with steam locomotives and remember seeing this(and other incidents) and reading about them in books. Glad to see someone has brought this story and knowledge to the modern era of RUclips for the next generation to see. This type of thing was absolutely horrific, and yes, human error was usually the cause.
Firing rules of a steam engine
1. Water
2. Water
3. Water
4. Keep steam pressure high and constant
5. Water
Great list, but you forgot the most important thing.
Water.
@@HuugTuub damn guess I'm not cut out for the job
@@onagoodday1 damn this job not for everyone
@@HuugTuub actually you forgot the last important thing water
@@nero7.171 shit, not even i am cut out for the job.
One of my friends is in the family business of managing apartment buildings in New York City. His family have so many interesting stories of interacting with tenants and doing building inspections. My friend found boxes of newspapers from the 1930s-40s and one article described how a basement boiler exploded, rocketed upward and crashed through all ten floors, then landed on the roof of another building half a block away.
You are a good Storyteller or orator. I'm subscribing
I spent 16 years in the Navy and one area I never wanted anything to do with was the boilers. Even the steam driven catapults on the carriers gave me the willies.
What a terrible way to go, especially as they didn't die right away.
I was a Damage Controlman in charge of repair 5 aboard the USS. Rathburne DE 1057. It had a 1200 psi super heated working pressure system. If a steam pipe blew, you had 13 seconds and you better be out of the space or pray there's sufficient water in the bilges to cover you. Spent 3 years, 7 months aboard that ship, and never liked going into the engineering spaces while underway.
@@davidlarson9975 Do you know about the Iwo Jima?
@@perfumegoose Thanks, Tim . I did not know about the Iwo Jima incident where ten sailors were scalded to death when a valve bonnet blew off. Very sad. That was a 600 psi. system. The ship I was on was 1200 psi and all of them were taken out of service early. I think because of the danger of fatigued weld joints and pin-hole leaks in the boiler pipes made the ships a potential nightmare. Once night while in Subic bay, I was the only one aboard ship that could weld. Everyone other crew member , than the duty section was ashore,. or if aboard was drunk. I was approached by a second class machinist mate that wanted me to weld a flange on a high pressure valve. He said we wouldn't be able top get underway the next day if it wasn't done. When I saw the extra heavy flange ,I told him I wasn't qualified to weld high pressure and in no way would I attempt it. He got mad at me and welded it himself with 7018 rod. We pulled out the next day. It held. 7018 is great rod, but not on a 1200 ib. system.
@@davidlarson9975 People like that are why other people die. 7018 is common carbon steel. I would say 3 to 5 passes. No one on board is allowed to weld level 1 except in an emergency.
Theres an even worse boiler explosion ,it happend 1977 in east germany . The only difference to this case was that the boiler exploded in a station . Not only the crew but also passengers died. A total of 5 people died and 50 people were injured
@ThyPeasantSlayer ?
@ThyPeasantSlayer Leave Bot.
The pain those Crew members must of suffered is unimaginable, RIP To the Crew.
My thoughts exactly. I hope the doctors at the hospital or the paramedics who attended them were able to pump them full of morphine before they finally died.
Or it was like they got in front af a claymore mine and torn apart
Must of? Not sure of that. Ive been burned before, the shock of your skin dying blunts the pain. Ive heard accounts of people with third degree burns who were lucid enough to talk casually with paramedics while their pale fat tissue was exposed and visible, burned away. Any severe enough damage to the body will destroy your nerves and negate your ability to feel what just happened to you. In a way, i would prefer more severe burns because it would ensure nothing of my nerves would be left to cause pain later.
@@pleaseenteranamelol711 Yeah i'm sure it tickled.... there is no way having your eye balls and face melt could cause any kind of discomfort
You don't feel because all your nerves (those little things that allow you to feel the world) are gone, dumdum
I used to make giant propane tanks for busses, and part of the process is sealing every valve with a plug, and putting the tank through a phosphate wash before being powder coated in a paint booth. Once painted we put the tanks through a massive oven to create a shiny waterproof coat of paint. Once it comes out of the oven, we take the plugs out. Sometimes water gets inside of the tanks, and when its heated to an extreme, it builds up a lot of pressure. I got a VERY bad burn on my forearm and chest when removing a plug. It bursted out like a bullet followed by steam so hot it seared my skin, and knocked me backwards nearly 10ft. Needless to say, they now use metal valve plugs instead of plastic ones.
Those old steam engines were no joke. They took incredible skill to operate safely and efficiently.
I saw another video where a couple of friends were playing a train game, one of them works at a railroad museum driving steam locomotives. He described why one of their creations (a 10% grade downhill-practically a rollercoaster) was a bad idea in real life:
"Basically, if your fireman's not on top of it, the crown sheet of the firebox gets exposed, and it instantly expands and slips off the bolts holding it together, and then it becomes a big steam-powered trebuchet. Which is a bad day for everyone involved."
kAN and Hyce?
What I think is interesting about this is there are what are effectively one or more bolts in the top of the firebox called fusible plugs, they have a lead core which will melt if water levels in the boiler drop and the temperatures get to high, if the lead core melts then enormous amounts of steam will spray out into the firebox alerting the crew to the dangerous situation. So how this accident occurred is even more mysterious with this in mind.
I was equally surprised when I heard about the Gettysburg Railroad boiler explosion a few months ago, so did some digging- American practice was not to use fusible plugs, but to use sacrificial crown stays instead, which would cause the crown sheet of the boiler to collapse and perform a similar function, albeit more violently
Not all locomotives had fusible plugs or sacrificial crown sheets. And if with a fusible plug if the locomotive is working hard the crew may not notice that the plug has melted as the draft from the exhaust could draft the steam away from the firebox door. I think a common misconception is that fusible plugs out out the fire, they do not. They act as a warning device and the crew then has to manually drop the fire.
Sacrificial crown.....
@@Stoker58 they should've by the 40's, that was a pretty modern locomotive at the time.
@@StaxRail Sacrificial crowns sound a lot more dangerous.
Man you keep up the quality for years. Great job and nice to see that Last Moments is still going :)
The retro groovy-horror style narration Qxir does is epic in itself. It makes me wish I was an artist.
Something worth noting is that this wasn't exclusive to super heated engines, this is something that could theoretically happen to any engine that's steam powered. Lots of images you can find of boiler explosions are shown to have happened on older 1800's styled British steam engines.
Actually, it is not the gaseous steam itself that causes the force of the explosion, at least not directly. In a locomotive fire tube boiler, the volume of steam itself is rather small because the boiler is generally rather full of water, and not capable of driving an explosion of any size. It is the saturated (meaning at the boiling point) water that is "at the ready" to convert into steam the instant the pressure is reduced due to the leakage through a breach. In an accident like this, the entire water content of the boiler will "flash" into steam in a matter of a second or two. It is that massive amount of released steam that causes the explosion.
The reason this matters is because over time, steam engineers learned this reality the hard way, and came up with an ingenious way to keep boilers from exploding in accidents. This device is the flash steam generator. They work by simply maintaining the bulk of the water in the boiler _below_ the boiling point by a few degrees. Then the actual steam generation takes place by pumping the water into a long coiled length of tube, where the water is "flashed" into steam in an _on-demand_ fashion. When a boiler of this type experiences a rupture, the small amount of steam in the tube can be released in a benign fashion, and the water remains in it's liquid state, thereby averting the explosive force witnessed here. The fabulous luxury steam car known as the Doble (after the designer Abner Doble) utilized this type of boiler. Naval ships use a type of forced convection boiler along these lines called a Lamont boiler, which could generate steam at five times the rate of simple fire tube or water tube boilers, with an incredible safety margin. They were lighter and faster and represented the pinnacle of steam generation technology.
Bro.... you talk like a politician... you said the exact same thing the video said but you used a different approach.. spent enough time on the railroad to know there is a fancy way of saying something simple, congratulations 🎊
@@christo138 No, I am sorry, but what I said is too complex for a simple mind like yours to understand. This is real physics, not something a railroad worker can grasp. I understand your limitations . . . someday maybe you will too. 😁
@@philroe2363 Nah hes absolutely right, you are a pseudointellectual, and going off your reply an egomanic too. You said that the gasous energy of steam did not cause the explosion, I would remind you that steams only capacity for "energy" is its ability to fill the volume of a container greater than that of its source. You then went on to explain, quite wordily, how heated water turned to steam to do exactly that while also rewriting the videos authors script to have a higher word count. Go touch grass.
That actually fills in a key part of this story, thanks Phil. Very interesting to hear where the engineering ended up - I didn't realise it had gotten as advanced as that.
@@DIYPerks
We always like to think that the current generation is superior from past generations.
And that's why we are always surprised of the ingenious solutions past engineers came up with
But the truth is, past generations were just as smart and ingenious than present generation. We are only where we are today because of the discoveries of our ancestors.
And no, we are not standing on shoulders of giants.
We are standing on top of a enormous human pyramid and once we pass, those who come after us will stand on top of us.
Just a small correction: @1:20 you show the superheater tubes going into the boiler, but actually they go into the fire tubes (that's why some of the tubes have a larger diameter). Submerging them in water would actually cool the steam instead of superheating it.
This also explains how the superheater tubes have been propelled out the front when the firebox burst. The high pressure steam entering the firebox basically shot the superheater tubes out the front like a cannon. The other weak spot out of the firebox was the door into the cab...
Thankyou. I was wondering how tubes came out of the front smokebox
Very well done. Most people don't realise that steam is the gaseous form of water and is invisible. The stuff that you can see is actually condensed steam - water vapour. There is an immense energy difference between steam and water vapour. To experience it, all you have to do is boil a kettle and look at what's coming out of the spout. There's a short invisible part and then a visible water vapour part that most people call steam. It's not steam. You can put your hand into the visible part with no problems, but putting your hand into the invisible part could mean a hospital visit. Don't be tempted to try it.
Being a rail enthusiast, the picture makes me distinctly uncomfortable. Like.... Yikes.
Being a not really rail enthusiast, same
This is crazy. It looks like Cthulhu as a train and I kinda expected you to be making an April Fool's joke. I didn't realize this was real.
Ha! We don’t do that here~
I am a retired stationary operating engineer, and in my training I had to know how to operate an electrical generation station using steam boilers. I can tell that you really did your homework on steam boiler dynamics because everything you stated in this documentary is EXCACLY correct. Bravo Zulu to you, well done!
Except for the part about steam generation being easier with low water.
This narrator is among the very best I have ever heard on You Tube.
Well, after watching the video and having it fully explained, I still maintain the belief that the train was secretly an eldritch being in the form of a locomotive.
Same, it look too surreal!
I maintain the belief that your belief is dumb.
I really appreciate the amount of work and research you put into each of your videos. Actually explaining some of the technology involved, but not overcomplicating it is also very helpful.
When my company installs a new coal steam boiler, it comes complete with an electronic panels as big as a small car. The electronics could alarm the operators if the pressure and temperature are too much. So not only it relies on relief valves but the company that built and installs it knew that safety is very paramount.
tbh, what makes this picture even more frighting is that this looks like a nuclear disaster incident where the fuel rods are sticking out.
Something about the tendrils of metal sticking out of the train is already freaky. Learning about the backstory though...that's even worse. I love your Last Moments series, you somehow cover topics I've never heard of and it's always both interesting and easy to understand :D
The old ICS report was available online and the head end brakeman survived long enough to say what happened. The hogger was running the loco around 20 mph, pulling hard up a grade and they ran about 10 miles without water in the glass. The firebox would not have been protected by the water, overheated, became weak and failed.
Other old ICS reports of other boiler explosions have listed the water level (can tell by the burn marks on the steel) being between 15" and 18" below the top of the crown sheet.
Hey, I usually watch RUclips on my TV so I don't get to comment much but I really wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your work. I've worked in TV, radio, internet, etc. media since 1979 and you have got a great natural delivery and on-screen personality. I hope you're killing online and that YT sends you lots of money every month. You more than deserve it, mate.
And no this isn't an April Fool's joke, just random timing. LOL
You are obviously bullshitting. Nice joke
The pipes sticking out unironically give me the creeps, like demons trying to escape out of the underworld , I also wonder how did the person taking this picture just be like, “oh, that just happened”
This photo invokes the same feelings in me as seeing photos of graphite blocks, fuel containing materials, etc. all over the ground and roof after the Chernobyl explosion, as well as the few photos we have of the reactor cap turned on its side, resting in the rubble.
It’s absolutely god damn horrifying
My father was an engineer and always explained heat transfer physics similar to this explanation.
If pipes are being shot out of the boiler, then something incredibly bad has gone wrong
This is the technical breakdown we needed!
Great channel, I'm watching all the shows. I'm currently living in Columbus Ohio, not 45 minutes or so from Chillicothe where the above story took place, reminding me of when my late grandfather told me about having to use railroad trains before and after he was in the Navy in Guam. I love history stories and this channel is awesome
Wow. I grew up in Chillicothe and never new about this.
Same. I’m surprised he pronounced “Chillicothe” right 😂
in my country where I worked thirty years ago a boiler exploded in a tobacco company, it traveled three kilometers through concrete buildings ripping right through them like knife in a butter killing eight people injuring three, I heard the incident and saw the aftermath. It was like a war zone, as if a missile was fired from a jet or so. RIP all the dead.
Chillicothe/Athens are neat little towns and there's a ton of railroad history here in OH. Glad to hear such a familiar story on this channel.
Great content as usual man
seriously technical, what a fantastic channel ❤
Truly an Ohio moment
Edit: sorry for got to edit after a month. I am really sorry to those who I had offended. Also, may the crew and passengers who were involved rest in peace.
Man It’s always Ohio 😤
Down in Ohio
Swag like Ohio
Ohio. Bruh
Never use a train in ohio
Now I know why Ohio is clowned upon
Imagine wandering through the forest just to find a Spaghetti-fied train
never forgetti
train spaghetti
Great video. My father used to work at a milk factory in the small town where I grew up, & as it was a fairly old factory, much of it's operations were run by an old steam boiler, it's fire being lit very early every morning & wood being put on the fire & pressures monitored for most of the working day. It did have a perfectly functional emergency release valve for pressure build up, but I remember mt Father being agitated on days when others were working there and, on occasion, the valve would pop off, releasing a loud burst of steam that could be heard around the town. They were being too complacent he felt & not keeping the pressures checked by controlling the fire & so forth, because, as he put it, if one day that emergency release were to fail, & no-one checked the gauges in time, that boiler would go off like a bomb & take half the damn town with it. Steam boilers are no joke!
This is an absolutely great channel!