OK, this is a little sensational, but it appears to be video of a preserved engine in runaway at a railway museum (note the miniature railway track on site).

Message: maybe chaining or chocking your engines is not such a bad idea?

At most places I have been working, chocking rolling stock without live brakes was considered mandatory, but there are a few places I have been at where they said "oh, it's flat here, we don't need any chocks".

https://youtu.be/-I5kz4GI_BI

IIRC it was caused by a collapsed dry pipe.

Didn't something similar happen to #4501 about 40 years ago when it was on the Southern? I remember hearing about it, and hearing that luckily Bill Purdie happened to be in the cab at the time, and managed to prevent it from going very far. Shows what a major safety improvement front-end throttles are.

I remembre Bill Purdie talking about it. They were coming in someplace and when he closed the throttle, 4501 kept pulling. It was all he could do to get the train stopped; he was able to stop and no one was hurt.

Phil Mulligan

How did we ever start with internal throttles in the first place? What is the advantage of putting the throttle in that hard to service place?

The dry steam lives in the dome, so if you ant to let it out it seems like a good idea to have it there. It doesn't have to be difficult to access - I worked on a German industrial locomotive that had the dome unbolt from a flanged joint down the dome instead of a lid so the throttle was available from all sides rather than just from above. Can you hear the sound of the wrench or split pin going pllnk plink plink down the tube bundle while you think about this?

Southern Wood Preservation Company No. 3 crawled away without a crew one night at the Chattanooga plant. She trailed a couple of switches, over a derail and out onto the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway main line. SWP didn't discover that she was missing until the following morning until they received a message from the NC&St.L that they had found the locomotive on the main line and had it at the Craven's Yard roundhouse. That was caused by a leaky throttle valve.

This is why some locomotives have a dome valve AND a front-end throttle: precludes nightwalking.

There will be some people who say 'why not ensure the locomotive reverser is set at mid; wouldn't that solve the problem'? If there were no combination lever, it might...

Amusingly, the threatened requirement of putting a relief valve in the dry pipe and superheater header of a dome-valve superheated engine "because it might in some circumstances constitute a separately-fired pressure vessel" could become an advantage if said valve were arranged to be 'trippable' from the cab in some way, so that it would 'relieve' at a much lower pressure in case of leakage or dry-pipe damage. That probably wouldn't have helped Mr. Purdie much, but it would cure most cases of nightwalking...

Thanks for the link. As hard as the engine is working for as slow as she is going, I would say that the brakes are set. It's doubtful that chains or chocks ("scorches" on the EBT don't ask me why) would have made any difference. One good feature of the new Part 230 is that it requires verifying the thickness of the dry pipe on every annual inspection. Something that the old Part 230 ignored completely.

If nothing else, at least they won the world speed record for crossing a turntable.

Back in April of 1906, a runaway steam locomotive plowed into the headhouse of the Union Depot in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The locomotive crashed through a set of heavy wooden doors that separated the pre-Civil War car shed from the hallway the led from the station restaurant and waiting room to the car shed. The locomotive tore up about sixty feet of Georgia marble flooring and broke the whistle rod, causing the whistle to blow continuously for about half an hour. The incident happened on a weekday at lunch time, so the depot restaurant was busy. No damage was done to the wall as the doorway arch was large enough for the locomotive to pass through by design-before the headhouse was built, trains arriving at the station pulled through with the locomotives outside the other end of the Car Shed to keep from filling it with smoke.

The only serious injury was to the baggage master. He had been exiting the baggage room when the locomotive burst through the doors and was hit in the head with a piece of flying marble.

Obviously nobody thought to open the cylinder cocks before leaving the cab, either,
much less be absolutely certain the reverse lever was on dead center.

I watched the video, looks like it finally got stopped by a derail?
What kind of damage happened to that 4-8-4 from this?

It is a WP class 4-6-2 locomotive. The class was built until 1973 and belonged to the last broad-gauge classes in India (WP, WL and WG). As far as I remember, usually they had four men in the cab on broad gauge.

Mike

Okie dokie, but that didn't answer my question at all...

Not a lot of damage from what I've found...
https://www.deccanherald.com/content/64 ... rails.html
Think it just ended up at an angle after derailing and seems to have been back hauling heritage services again fairly rapidly.
How 1965 is "old" given what other locos survive in India is beyond me!