I agree with Mark on our belief that “Fireman” and “uneducated” dont mix. Unforunately there is a prevailing and ignorant belief among those not educated in the railroad that fireman simply stood beside the Engineer and shoveled coal. If it was only that easy (actually thats rough work). In fact he was responsible for any number of things that I am sure Mark and others who have fired loco’s could go into detail about. On a personal note my Grandfather was originally a fireman for the Western Maryland RR in the 30’s (I have a photo of him beside the mighty H-9 class) and later tested for and became an Engineer and retired from them several years after dieselization. I am sure if he was still living he would jump on this quicker than you could imagine. Please refrain from using the term ‘Fireman’ and ‘Uneducated’ in the same sentence. In addition i am sure no one is making fun of slavery or anything of the like. Lastly, being in transportation management i can assure you safety is no laughing matter but sometimes trained people make bad decisions through inattention, distraction and carelessness and its these times bad things happen.
Yes, I agree. The race card, even if true, wasn’t necessary to be introduced in this discussion. Otherwise we’d have to demonstrate that no white firemen ever made a silly or unintentional error. Since we know that isn’t the case, the race thing is irrelevant.
Since it was my comment that seems to have caused that card to be dealt, let me say for the record that I still have no idea whether the fireman in question was white, black, red, brown, yellow or purple (with big green polkadots) - but I DO know that he should have known better. If his supervisors hadn’t briefed him on the workings of a boiler, he should have asked before acting.
You also have to remeber at that point in history, steam engines, be they on ships or locomotives, were new. There were very few people that knew anything about them, let alone how to safely operate them. The designer know enough to put a safety valve on it, but even he may not have known what would happen if it failed or was defeated. When the fireman did it, he was tying down an annoying, squeeling thing on top of the boiler (safety valve). He probably didn’t even know what it was or what it was supposed to do. Our 20-20 hindsight in this case is after a century of steam locomotive use and operation.
The book Train Wrecks by Robert C Reed would be a good study book, as it has a chapter devoted to boiler explosions, with a number of photographs and pictures of the end result of a boiler explosion. Overall, a very good read, as it shows how some of the more famous wrecks over the first 100+ years of railroading took place.
I have a copy of the first edition (1968), and it has been reprinted many times, with Amazon.com currently priced between $1-$40 for the newer paperback edition.
I havemost of the Trains issues from the 90’s, I will take a look to see if any of them make mention of the Gettyberg incident.
The NP Historical Society publication, The Mainstreeter has a two-part article (Volume 19, No. 1 and No. 2) on the explosion of NP 4-6-6-4 No. 5105 on 7/7/1938. There are lots of details including a sort of slow motion account of exactly how the crown sheet let go during the 3/10th second time frame, and continuing on to describe the exact course and attitude of the boiler as it became an airborne projectile, and finally on to a description of the area that was subjected to a rain of parts falling back to the ground.
Apparently, the down blast of a crown sheet failure, and the upward reaction thrust combine to create a sudden impediment to the forward motion of the train, almost like running into a solid object. However, I have not read nor heard of a lot of discussion of this principle. That appears to have occurred in the case of this NP explosion. Many freight cars in the 4000-ton train were smashed together more or less still in line, almost as if they telescoped. The explosion was due to low water, but the investigation failed to explain how events led to the low water or why the crew would ignore the low water alarm, which is loud enough to be heard hundreds, if not thousands of feet from the locomotive. NP rebuilt the locomotive and continued to use it.
In his book, Call The Big Hook, Samuel Dougherty describes a boiler explosion on the D&RGW in 1934, of engine no. 1409, a 2-10-2. It blew the firebox right off of the boiler, and the boiler, frame, running gear, and the rest of the train continued on for a mile. The cause was a build up of mud in one of the water legs. The deposit built up to about 2’ x 2’. It prevented the water from circulating through that area and created a hot spot that burned the firebox side sheet.