Well that was a "duh" moment. I apologize to our European colleagues for my Americentric whoops!

Oh I am sure some of our european counterparts get states mixed up to, and may not know that California and Ohio are so far apart, for example.

Fair enough. The only reason I was thinking fusible is that they talked about the "safety mechanism came into effect".

Granted, it's a newspaper article run through a translator, which is a lot like the old game of "telephone" where what goes in isn't what comes out.

Another safety mechanism they could be talking about is the Firedoor. On the DB-64 class locomotive the "Marcotty" style firedoor is used. It opens to the inside of the firebox and is designed to close automaticaly if there is "blowback" pressure in the firebox (such as when a tube collapses).

I had something pop up in my facebook feed about this incident. It listed that a superheater flue had collapsed at the smokebox tubeplate, causing the blowback of steam/flames into the cab.
2 people with burns and 1 person with a broken leg as a result of jumping from the cab.

Something similar happened about a decade ago in Australia. SteamRanger loco 520 had a collapsible fuse plug come completely out of the crown sheet resulting in a much bigger hole in the boiler than the fusible plug would normally create. This caused a large amount of water, steam and flames to enter the cab. There were 3 crew members on the footplate along with a passenger having a footplate ride. The crew were able to escape with only minor burns, however the passenger was trapped and passed away as a result of the severe burns received.

I cannot find the report about this incident to link to, however it's always a good reminder when working on our locos, to ensure that the fusible plugs are correctly installed every time they are refitted. The one that caused this incident had been removed/checked or replaced (cannot recall which) the night before the incident.

It changed some of the operating standards in Australia, thankfully members of the public can still experience the thrill of riding on the footplate of a steam loco. I'll be doing this with a friend who is a driver at Puffing Billy in a few weeks, with my 4 year old daughter sitting in the drivers seat. She's been having cab rides since she was 2 weeks old and absolutely loves it, my 3 year old not so much...... (too noisy) I certainly hope that this can continue in the future as the joy we both get from it and the faces of the tourists when they see a blonde kid sitting in the drivers seat with the correct overalls and shirt etc on is just priceless! A few have actually stopped, done the double take and questioned as to whether she was the one controlling the loco for that last section.....

Cheers, Al.

We have a club. It's called the EU leaky boiler flue committee. It's meeting next Tuesday. We will eat in some really fine restaurants, but we probably won't actually make any decisions.

And don't forget the time UP 3985 blew a flue in Sacramento. It's not just in the water over here.

What we saw in Belgium is exactly the reason so many people here were aghast at tolerating a massively-leaking flue (without assessing the damage between flue and tubeplate) -- or dealing with an established leak in a boiler using water treatment by just re-rolling over whatever might have been deposited or corroded in the joint ... and then observing massive leakage there again.

The lightning struck elsewhere this time, but it's almost like a sign from God not to treat tubeplate leaks with too much complacency... even to eke out one or two trips

To set the record straight, it was 844, not 3985. The gist of what happened was related by
Bob Kreiger here
http://uphs.org/844boiler.htm

Ohio couldn't invade California with longboats and battleaxes. Oregon could maybe, we have a lot of Scandinavians here.

Plus the fact we are both Americans who used to live in Dayton, Ohio. Longboats dont work so well in cornfields!