David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com> wrote: I hope these steam locomotives are not bombs looking for a chance to > explode! >
They often did explode, unfortunately, even in the 1930s, at the pinnacle of the technology. Maybe a single pipe explosion or an accident was more common than a boiler failure . . . I do not know. As I said, I read somewhere that superheater failures and explosions were common in some types of locomotives, so they stopped using them. I remember reading the memoir of a steam locomotive engineer who said they lived in fear of explosions, and saw a lot of people killed by them. Marine steam engines were terribly dangerous, according to my dad who was a fireman in the 1930s. These were oil fired, "when you finally got the damn thing to light." > > Jed, I gather from the remainder of the article that a saturated steam > locomotive is used in some applications. This suggests to me that the > quality of the steam is pretty good. > Yup. It was definitely used on the simpler, cheaper engines. That is what this and other sources say, including Wikipedia. - Jed
