.

Not only is the cab intact, but the coal is still in place in the tender.

Reminds me of a boiler explosion that destroyed an engine in Cuba. The root cause was an improper boiler repair. Witnesses said the boiler gave with a load bang. The bell was found in a field a mile away; the fireman was standing next to it oiling the works when it gave, and only his feet were found.

I would venture that this was more likely due to undetected grooving, than any inherent design flaw in lap seams, which, btw are still used, built new, and perfectly legal accross the waters. The cause of the phantom Lap Seam Crack was not due to design, but to the work hardening caused by punching the rivit holes and not reaming out the damaged material. Even welded boilers can suffer from grooving.

Also keep in mind that internal inspections on boilers with the domes over the firebox were very very difficult, and it was almost impossible for all but the smallest of statures to get over the firebox, crown bars or stays, and into the barrel, even with the dry pipe and tubes removed. This was just one of the many reasons the extended wagontop superceded the plain old wagon top boiler.

Kelly,

The flies are buzzing. Are you happy?

I'm more interested in the differences in the pilot wheels?......

Mark

I have noticed many photos of 4-4-0s of that era with two different types of pilot wheels. Often one is spoked and the other is solid. I wonder if there may have been some actual purpose behind that other than just randomly replacing wheels with what was avaiable. And how likely is it that just one of the two wheels needed replacing?

The photos only show one side, so I wonder what the other side had for pilot wheels. I wonder if they ran different wheels on the same axle, or if wheelsets always got changed out intact.

The explosion force blew forward why the cab is intact. I wonder about the pilot wheels if changed during servicing. That will say something while this engine was in for repair before.

Today's steamers could not withstand yearly inspections as they don't have the time-manpower for an inspection the railroads could do in 2 weeks time.

Probably a good reason for the adaptive new codes for boilers and the 14 year time. By now I think boiler technology has improved since.

The pilot wheels are certainly different, with one being 10-spokes and the other 8-spokes. But I suspect that the larger apparent difference results from the fact that the explosion blew the tire off the trailing wheel.

That trailing wheel of the truck appears to be just the empty hub. I thought it looked oddly insufficient as a truck wheel. It looks more like a mine car wheel. Then I compared the diameter to the lead wheel. The diameter of the trailing wheel matches the hub diameter of the lead wheel. I doubt they would have been running wheels with that much difference in diameter.

I don't know how that bolted tire assembly of the lead wheel is made. But from the look of the situation, that whole tire assembly has been blown off the trailing wheel hub by the outward force of the explosion.

That seems rather improbable, but what else could explain it? There was probably most of the explosion striking that trailling wheel as opposed to the lead wheel. So, on one hand, I would think the force would twist the truck before it would blow the tire off. But, on the other hand, the force would have probably blown equally to each side. Maybe it blew the tire off the other side too.

what you are looking at was an engine that had seen a lot of service, was worn out, and probably poorly kept up. The truck wheels were nothing special, the rear ones appear to be a variety of cast iron wheels with chilled faces-there is no tire on them and never was. The fronts are just a variation several designs of wheels that didn't shrink the tire on, but were held on by a clamps drawn together by the bolts seen. I bet a small keg of Franconia that the engine was in second or third hand service.

Usually when a locomotive was manufactured they would use top of the line parts, I.E. spoked wheels. When repairs where made often times less expensive parts where used or what ever they had on the self that day. This would often be the cause of the mis-matched wheels.

Well, the wheels are mismatched as seen by the different number of spokes, but I don't believe that trailing wheel is complete.

Putting that kind of single-piece cast spoked wheel on a road locomotive truck would be like routinely running a car on the doughnut spare tire. That kind of light pattern lead truck wheel is generally pre-1850 practice. The locomotive in the photo is probably depicted in the 1880-1900 era, as evidenced by its extended smokebox.

And the diameter difference of the two truck wheels in the photo is about 4". I doubt they would have accepted that.

I would suspect this happened pre-ICC (look how thin the driver tires are). I have seen quite a few old pictures of engines with mismatched truck wheels-even the diameters different. If you go to the log woods it gets even worse-lots of old hogs got whatever wheels were laying around. When TWM Long bought ANNR #108 for the Reader, it had Shay driver centers. If the Diameters were off very much, they would shim the bearing brasses to bring the truck frame into some kind of level. Before any type of federal regs their was a lot of "creative railroading" taking place out in the hinterlands.

How did you arrive at your four inch difference, because it certainly doesn't appear that way to me.

Yes, maybe that is just the whole wheel they were running. It does not really look right for a hub. I would not expect a hub to have a flange that large if it had a flange at all. I scale the diameter as matching the OD of that bolt ring on the lead wheel, but maybe that is only a 2.5-3.0" difference.

In any case, I cannot believe the explosion could have blown a tire off of a wheel.