Recently I came across a photo showing the front of a sizable steam engine that had been destroyed by an explosion. The front was blown open and boiler pipes faned out in all directions…Seemingly, almost the full length of 'em.
Item: Years…no…decades ago, I witnessed the result of one of B&O’s larger steam engines that had exploded the night before. I was young. Can’t tell any exact model it was…It was on a coal drag on the Somerset & Cambria branch of the B&O and the location was just north of Listie, PA. Several of us “kids” rode our bicycles 4-miles the following day to see the results. That’s a few years ago…About 1944…and the site was beyond awesome. The only remaining structure of that engine was the massive frame…steam cylinders…rods…wheels, etc…Everything else was blown away in chuncks and pieces…Can’t be specific where or how far away what was remaining of the boiler assy. There must be photos of that terrible incident someplace…Although I realize not like there would be today…Any ideas out there…
Local newspapers would be your primary source. Many newspapers have archived their past issues on-line (our local paper is searchable almost back to the Civil War) and are quite searchable. By the 1940’s photos in even small papers were common.
If there’s anything that’s going to hold you back here, it’s that the incident occured during the war, so it probably wouldn’t get the coverage it might have seen just a few years earlier or later. And that will probably include pictures.
Boiler explosions, while not common, weren’t exactly rare, either. So unless said explosion caused greater mayhem than the immediate area, it probably wouldn’t have caused a great stir in the news outside the local area.
If it happened in today’s media-happy world, all you’d have to do is search YouTube…
B&O Q-1c 4240, built by Baldwin August, 1913, Construction number 40193.
Crownsheet failure; low water at Listie, Pennsylvania, September 19, 1942. Two killed and three injured.
The locomotive was reboilered during 1942 with the boiler from P-1d 4-6-2 5070, which in turn received the boiler from Q-1c 2-8-2 4294 (which was eventually scrapped in 1945). It is unclear whether 4240 returned to service in that form, because before the end of 1942 she was converted to class T-3 4-8-2 5555 at Mt. Clare Shops (Baltimore).
She was the first T-3, and was renumbered 700, effective January 1, 1957. She was one of many T-3’s operated on lines west of New Castle, Pennsylvania in the 1950’s, and was used on at least one fan excursion in the last days of steam. She was dropped from the roster on Aug. 19, 1960.
I saw number 700 on the dead line at Willard, Ohio, in the summer of 1959. I was 13.
This info came from B&O Class Q, by Julian Barnard (Barnard, Roberts & Co.); and Steam Locomotives of the Baltimore & Ohio, An All-time roster, by William Edson, (self-published), Potomac, MD, 1992.
ACY: This is awesome. You have located the very incident I described. Had the date a bit off, but…I was 11 yrs. of age. Got to thinking of that bike ride…It was more than 4 miles…More like 5 +. How did we do that and back home {Stoystown}, by dark…Somehow. ACY, thank you so much for finding and showing it to me and of course others. The fact that engine was rebuilt and put back to work is quite a story. As I described it earlier…From the frame up…it was gone…! That’s my memory. I’ll have to do a little checking to maybe contact the whereabouts of a photo. If none…wouldn’t surprise me. Closest paper at that time…A small one: Somerset Daily American {I think}…and a larger one would have been down in Johnstown: The TribuneDemocrat.
Again, thank you. Q
And: Thanks to Paul North & Larry…I’ll have to do some more looking, maybe some paper might…but kind of doubt it. As was stated, it was War time…Not every one had a camera then. Now camera’s are everyplace via, phones.
Yes, Paul…Saw that same engine in photo earlier…Photo I saw was from the other side. The “splayed” tubes caught my attention. That’s the very one that reminded of the experience I related today…Q
PS: Believe when an explosion occurs at the crown sheet…I believe it has the power and force to lift the whole boiler off the chassis…Hence leaving what I saw…Just the heavy parts of the engine below.
Actually, not many (if any) parts from the original 4240 were used in rebuilding her to T-3 number 5555. All of the forty T-3’s and T-3 subclasses were constructed by using lengthened boilers from older Q-1 Mikados and P-1 Pacifics. The frames for the new 4-8-2’s were all-new castings with integral cylinders, so 5555 used the boiler from 5070, and probably not much from 4240. I have no idea whether 4240’s tender survived. If it did, it wasn’t used on 5555, but it might have been used behind an E-27 Consolidation or some other engine. B&O did a lot of that.
Evening news this evening reported a industrial boiler explosion in St. Louis. Killed one in the plant where the explosion happend, and killed two, two blocks away where the boiler landed through the roof of another business.
The “Spaghetti” sticking out the front are the super heater pipes. The crown sheet ruptured downward and the explosive force in the firebox blew down the flues, shoving the pipes out the other end.
The death toll in the terrific explosion of a Baltimore and Ohio railroad freight engine on the Somerset-Cambria branch at Listie early Saturday morning increased to two with the death of Clarence Ohler, 23, of Sand Patch near Meyersdale, later Saturday morning.
Ohler died of severe steam burns over the entire body just a short time after the discovery of the body of John L. Berkley, 62, West Race street, Somerset, who was thrown from the engine cab for a distance of 500 feet and instantly killed.
Berkley met instant death. The clothes were torn from his body, which was badly burned and mutilated. Ohler’s death occurred in a Somerset ambulance en route to a Pittsburgh hospital, where Ohler would have undergone special treatment for the burns he suffered.
In the meantime the three injured members of the train crew are being treated at Somerse
I have to give away the fact I’m older than dirt, but in 1905 my grandfather was killed in a derail and boiler explosion on the Pere Marquette near Traverse City, MI. I believe it was mostly a logging railroad at the time. I haven’t been able to find much information about it. My dad was only two at the time so I never had the privelige of knowing my grand dad, and dad never spoke much about it. My dad was onlytwo when that happened so I’m sure he had little memory of that.
Tracing one’s history and geanology can be a mojor challenge at times.
