There is a tool unlike any other tool called - the OX-ACETYLENE WELDING TORCH. This was developed in the early part of the 20th Century.
Originally it was used in welding - the OX-ACETYLENE TORCH can be used for cutting steel or any other ferious metal. Basically by changing the tip of the welder to the cutting tip - the torch heats a small section of the steel or iron to a dull red then to orange then to white where the steel begins to burn - by pressing the cutting lever, a jet of pure OXYGEN is then blowen onto the white hot steel and a cutting process begins which very quickly can cut steel of tremendous thickness in seconds. The cutting process uses no more heat that that used in the pre-heat process the oxygen stream causes the steel to burn.
If I were to take a small OX-ACETYLENE welding setup - (two small tanks and hose apparatus) - which can be purchased anywere. If I were to take this to the local railroad main line track - light the torch heat a section of the rail - I could cut the track apart instantly.
Those steam engines were easy work for this process as are the great ship that go to the wrecking beach in India or Turkey where teams of the poorest people have these torches and cut apart the great ocean liners and ships like a “knife thru butter.”
Cutting that steam engine in half was just hours work - and the frame itself as cut by burning almost instantly.
By the way you can get an OX-ACETYLENE torch at any heating cooling sales or welding equipment store for about $300. You can learn to cut steel with it in about 10 minutes. Padlocks, chains, fences, cars nothing is safe from scrapping with this tool.
Concerning Mohawk NYC 2808 - Another thing that surprised me about this photo of a severed engine was that the side rods were removed and not cut in half. Also the boiler seems to be cut around in a circle a second time about 6 feet ahead of
Just to add a bit: The oxyacetylene welding torch uses acetylene (C2H2 with a high-energy triple bond between the carbons) and oxygen to obtain a HOTTER flame, with only the amount of oxygen feed to give complete combustion of the acetylene fuel gas. You can use reducing and oxidizing portions of the torch flame, but the flame cone itself is comparatively short. The cutting torch has a different architecture - like the oxygen lance, it uses a separate high-pressure jet of oxygen that does essentially ALL THE CUTTING. No added hydrocarbon fuel is required; you could shut off the acetylene completely once the critical heating temperature (technically autoignition temperature) is reached, and the cutting will be self-sustaining via the (highly exothermic) reaction of iron/steel with oxygen. Cut depth can be greater than 8", especially if (as in scrapping) you don’t care how straight the edges of the cut are. I’m sure there are pro welders here who can contribute further insights.
I believe the pictures were taken at the Stelco steel mill in Hamilton, Ontario. It had not occurred to me that NYC or perhaps other US railroads sold locomotives to foreign scrappers – so this was useful information.
I have come to love the OX-ACETYLENE torch over the years, mostly for automotive use in burning exhaust pipes and or heating rusted bolts so they will unscrew easily.
Industrial uses of “the torch” are really quite dramatic. You talk about the oxygen lance which I personally have never seen but its industrial use is outstanding. Take the large cast steel frame of a locomotive. The OX-ACETYLENE torch cutting tip has a large pre-heat nozzle which in this case would be used to heat a small edge of a large steel casting. When the edge gets red hot and goes to orange and white the cutting lever is pressed. This jets pure oxygen into the steel and starts the burn. Cutting proceeds quickly as the oxygen reduces the steel to molton drops of metal.
At this point an OXYGEN LANCE basically a tube with jet of pure OXYGEN is blowen into the cutting steel the process accelerates and the OX-ACETYLENE torch itself can be removed or turned off. The OXYGEN LANCE will cut apart the locomotive frame by itself with no heat other than the burning steel.
I have seen pictures in industry where steel foundry workers will trim fresh cast steel castings with this tool. Cuts in steel that are 12 inches thick are easily severed.
Actually this type of process was used in war where Armor Piercing amunition creates this type of burn with a cone shaped charge and will burn right through thick tank armor. This was the WWII Bazooka rocket and the German Panzerfaust. It is the principle behind modern Tank destroyer weapons today and is defeated by ceramic armor or explosive balistic armor that explodes sending the anti tank rocket into pieces before it can burn into the tank armor.
Interesting chemical reaction of steel is the result of the steel burning process the chemical formula of which I am not immediately familiar.
Glad you identified the location of the NYC 2808 demise am wondering if the Hudson pic
I worked at the now closed and mostly torn down Bethlehem Steel plant in Lackawanna NY from 1967 to 1983. The old-timers had many stories and photos of the mostly NYC locomotives that were scrapped at the mill. Some of these men were horrified that not one Hudson or Niagara was spared. But, my boss told me, “if it makes you feel any better, not one bell went into the furnace.” I suspect this was more acting on railfan nostalgia than keeping undesirable tramp elements out of the steel.
My Merriam-Wedster Pocket Dictionary defines “hide” as: 1) put or remain out of sight; 2) conceal; 3) keep secret. This discussion offers an adequate sufficiency of these.
That dictionary offers a fourth definition: to turn away.
There is an old adage: “None is so blind as they who will not see”. I shall now resort to the legal “tactic” of “hypothetical”. After that group of employees has done their thing, the “Hypothetical Railroad Officials” silently join the effort to save. You gotta understand that they don’t lie – but, as a good Yankee is want to say: “They is a mite frugal with the truth”. It helps if “hypothetically” somehow “the save” is removed from inventory. All this accomplished, both the bean counters and the board (or anyone else) has no record of “the save” and no reason to ask. All this accomplished, “the save” is as effectively hidden as if garbed in a Harry Potter cloak of invisibility.
I was recently reading about the New York Central’s “Mohawk” #2933, now on display in St. Louis.
According to museum reports, after the locomotive was retired, it was saved from the torch by a group of employees who somehow “Hid” the locomotive in a switching yard for 3(?) years, until the museum acquired it.
My question is how did they manage to keep such a large locomotive hidden from railroad officials? Obviously, it would have dwarfed surrounding rolling stock. What could have been done to disguise
According to the Morning Sun book, “New York Central Steam, In Color”, the following may help explain the survival of the Mohawk at the Museum of Transportation at St Louis: "The 2933 now located at the Museum of Tranport, St Louis, MO was used as a temporary heating boiler at Selkirk. After serving this duty, it was hidden from view by local supervision by piling boxes around it. there you have it!
In a lot of cases they were also unable to legally scrap the locomotives until their trust certificates expired or were paid off. The modern day equivalent would be buying a new car on credit and running it to junk before you made the last payments. You would be unable to legally sell it to a scrapyard until you paid off the loan. Clinchfield’s challenger-types survived until 1963 for this reason alone.
Norfolk & Western went through this legal fol-de-rol with its Train Masters in the early 1970’s. The ex-Wabash TM’s were in the 3590 series and at least two of them (3592 & 3599, IIRC) were scrapped before the equipment trusts were paid off. Ex-VGN TM’s were renumbered to replace the scrapped locomotives.
Reminds me of an article I read in “Locomotive and Railway Preservation” magazine back in the '90s about the Barry scrapyard in England where a LOT of steam locomotives ended up.
There was a photo of a steamer where someone had chalked a weeping face on the smokebox door with the words “Please don’t let me die!”
Damn picture haunted me for a month afterward. I hope the engine was saved. I never got around to writing “Eleanor P.” to ask.
I have one of the DVDs and a book about it. The reason there are so many preserved loomotives in Britain is because of the yard. Most are of the Great Western Railway as the Barry yard had the contract to scrap the locos when steam started to be withdrawn. Over 300 locos were sent to the yard and over 213 of them were saved.
Another thing to consider is that while steam gradually went away on this side of the Atlantic starting in the 1930s, main line steam went away all at once by 1968 in Britain. Also, the closing of lines after the Beeching report of 1963 made a lot of locomotives redundant. Dai Woodham, the owner of the yard had a sentimental attachment to steam and kept them to be scrapped last after cutting up hundreds of frieight cars. He was a business man, after all and preservationists paid him more for the locos than he would have got for them as scrap.
Everything I’ve read about Barry Scrapyard says otherwise.
The bulk of their steam locomotives survived out of practicality. They went for the low hanging fruit first in order to maximize storage space, saving the harder to scrap steamers for when there were lulls in rolling stock scrappings. It had nothing to do with sentimentality (Which I believe he stated more than once), although he graciously cooperated with the preservation movement as much as possible.
And steam didn’t go away all at once. The decision was made in 1955 to dieselize and electrify, with that project well underway by the end of the 1950’s with mass withdrawals underway. The last steam locomotive arrived in 1960 and steam was dead by 1968. A timeline not too unlike what went on in North America, if not even longer. Over here, outside of a handful of exceptions, steam died on the bulk of the network in the US and slightly later, Canada, in a span of 10 years or less from the time that the decision had been made by most of the system to dieselize.
By the time that the Beeching axe arrived in 1964 or so, the end of steam was set in stone and had been well underway for years. So I’m sure it played a role, but only a small one in the date that steam utilization came to its final end on British Rail.
Fair enough but I get a different impression from the interview Woodham gave on the DVD. When I say that steam went away all at once, I did mean 1968. There were mass redundancies as a result of the Beeching report which led to mass withdrawals of steam locomotives and freight and passenger cars. I was in Britain in 2013 on the 50th anniversary of the Beeching report and the newspapers were all discussing it, few pro, most con. Another thing being a factor was that the transport minister at the time was Ernest Marples who owned a paving company. Gotta love politics!
Ok let me get this straight - there is in Merry old England an individual called a “Transport Minister.” Who has the power to decide that steam locomotives are to be scrapped, and said minister Ernest Marples had a professional conflict of interest - being an owner of a highway paving company! Thereby causing said railroads and steam locomotives (privately funded I assume) to diminish while govenment paid for an alternate form of transportation subsidized by the taxpayer? In the meantime enriching said Transportation minister’s pockets.
Such things are not done in England! Only in the United States where it is assumed every individual, corporation, and the US government, is out for himself! And there are no pinciples, values or moral compunction - and no queen to worry about! What would HER MAGESTY THINK!
Here in the great frozen North about 20 years ago we had a new Provincial premier named Mike Harris, a former golf pro. His transport minister named Al Palladini, owned Pine Tree Ford Lincoln Mercury. A new subway was being built along Eglinton avenue in Toronto. The hole was being dug, then it was filled in. With concrete!