Note the story is from July 15th:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news ... al-2054301

On top of everything else, now we have to worry about this????

If the coal is properly distributed, there shouldn't be a problem. I do recall reading an autobiography by a British fireman and his remarks on trimming the coal so as to avoid this very situation. Any item of sufficient mass can cause injury if it has sufficient velocity.

pfft, things do happen, be carefull around steam engine.

It just reminds me some trucker on the toll road not long ago SE of Chicago next to the South Shore its load shifted and flew onto the South Shore tracks and road below, no trains, or cars involved but its load of metal ripped right thru the rail. Poorly secured.

Shut down the line till fixed.

Not sure why a steam engine would need such large of a chunk unless it was hand fired,
a stoker would not move a large chunk.

This is Britain we're discussing. What, pray tell, is this "stoker" of which you speak? The guy shovelling? They're called "firemen."

It was (and still is) not unknown for British steamers to load up with minimally- or un-processed coal with a huge variation in sizes, to the point where firemen had to use sledgehammers to occasionally smash larger slabs to scoop-size.

I've seen this done in the US as well, on the EBT...If the slab didn't break after 3 hits from the sledgehammer, it was tossed out the side.

Jeff

I've been regaled by friends who were firemen on British railways, trying to keep up steam while having to break up huge chunks of coal before feeding it to the engine.

That might be OK on a rural branchline with tiny engines but it's incredible that this would be done on fast, hungry locomotives as well.

I've seen plenty of coal fall off locomotives, but over here it wouldn't hurt much- we don't try to burn boulders!

Do you think this fellow might have been just a wee bit too close to the track?

Steve Hunter

Reminds me of a story told to me by an old maintainer on the Lehigh Valley how he was nearly decapitated by a block of ice when a cook kicked a block of ice out the side of the diner... right as the car was passing him as he stood trackside.

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I don't know if it's still the practice, but 35 years ago, Cedar Point bought "lump" coal for the CP&LE by the truckload, and issued a hammer with every engine crew for just such use.

It's not only coal you need to watch for. If you're near the tracks, any number of things can do you in. Brake shoe or whatever.
I think of the older photographers who would stand at a junction and take photos of PRR K4s hammering over the crossing at 80 and wonder what the jolt of the crossing would shake loose.
Be aware of your surroundings.

I guess the UK was not entirely devoid of stoker-fired engines, though very nearly. The Wikipedia article about the BR Standard Class 9F 2-10-0 locomotives mentions that three of them had stokers for a while. Apparently the stokers were not a success, and were removed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BR_Standard_Class_9F


A. J. Powell, on Page 121 of his book Living with London Midland Locomotives, mentions that they were Berkley mechanical stokers “and perhaps not the proved machine that, for instance, the American ‘Standard’ stoker was.”

Umm, he was "watching the train being pulled by a diesel" but hit by coal from a steam engine? Was the steamer being pulled dead in train or simething?

Brandi

Its possible the coal was high loaded, hit a piece of bad track, and the large chunk fell over due to the not so secure coal loading. A bit of a freakish accident really.

Stoker..as in the powered stoker used on many US steamers apparently not so much in England as they didnt need huge long range engines.

We live in a time of daily car accidents, this is pretty rare.

I observed coal being broken up on the deck plate while riding the cab of the LNER 4472 "Flying Scotsman" between Pasco and Wishram, Washington on September 16, 1971. The condition of the coal was enough of a problem that the crew had to stop several times to build steam while climbing the grade on the Oregon Trunk Railway south of Wishram.

Again with the nomenclature problem. "Coal"???

I have a couple first-hand accounts of that run that said the so-called "fuel" supplied, a local variety of lignite, was effectively "barely flammable dirt." It would be on par with pumping diesel fuel into a sports car, or wet, "green" firewood into a wood stove.