I don’t even have the words for this: https://youtu.be/Zwdbx_Cra3I
This engine is apparently in McKenna, on the road to Mt Rainier from Olympia, I know of the guy who owns this but I’ve never met him, even though I’ve driven past the end of his driveway countless times.

Lee -

When I first looked at the video, I thought this might be Anacortes Railroad 0-4-4RT # 1, but that engine was a narrower gauge. Not sure just what the story is on this particular Forney, but I can understand why the original poster took the video down.

Les

The locomotive is a three foot gauge Davenport from Longwood plantation, later owned by Mr Will Ed Butler, of Ponchatoula, Louisiana. Just remember "Everybody is a hero in somebody else's situation".

Does anyone know about the rules for a boiler like this? If it's on landlocked rail (which at 3-foot gauge, clearly it is) and doesn't cross any public roads, FRA doesn't get a say as I understand it.
But I'm not familiar with small boiler certifications as far as the states are concerned. I know that traction engines that aren't on rails have to have certification of some kind in WA state, so surely this would as well?
If that's the case, imagine the inspector seeing this video first...

My experience in Texas 25 years ago may well not apply in this situation. However, the FRA didn't care about a 30" gauge RR on private property with no public grade crossings, but they DID ask if they could bring their grandkids down to my place for a picnic sometime. The State of Texas sent a boiler inspector at my request, and he said my engine looked safe to him, but that I was not required to have a boiler certificate because my engine was private property located on private property. He got a hunting lease from us and visited often for better than 10 years, helped me get hired at Texas State RR, and recommended me for a boiler inspector's position when he retired. --- I'm thinking that it must have been pretty legal.

I CAN tell you that today there is a busy, 14 mile long, private, standard gauge, industrial RR located entirely on private property, with no public grade crossings, here in Colorado. I know for a fact that they are exempt from FRA oversight.

As most of you know, the FRA does not have jurisdiction regarding insular operations such as this one. Thus, any boiler inspection falls to the state jurisdiction.

Most state jurisdictions are part of a "public protection" office. If the public isn't involved, then they aren't either. If this is on private property and has no public presence, no inspection will be done.

However, if the owner puts a sign up "Train Rides" and the public is involved, then the state boiler inspector will show up. Most state boiler inspectors are not familiar with locomotives, so how well it is inspected varies. Rules for inspection vary from state to state.

The boiler inspector usually does not have any say on operator qualifications.

So then as it stands now, there's nothing anyone can legally do to prevent him destroying said locomotive and making other steam operations look bad (and come under further scrutiny) as a result??

Holy smokes... runs Hell bent for leather -with high water- to the end of the track, engine runs off and BOUNCES... cameraman - "I think you're on the ground."

That poor, poor engine...what on Earth was he trying to prove with that idiotic display???

73
RWC

So it took a few hours to heat up the engine, but in the meantime they didn't find one single minute to check their 50 yards of track.

Amazing.

Mike

Yeah, I guess the dirt wasn’t packed tight enough around the rails to hold gauge. Needs to be rained on a few more times to settle it in.

I'm sorry, but I think that's funny as hell. LOL Looks like they have plenty of machines available to put it back on the tracks. I like that Jeep Forward Control in the background...

Most of you are familiar with the steam tractor crown sheet failure at Medina, OH which killed 5 men. How that didn't become the "Gettysburg event" for that hobby has always confused me.
Sure, there's the deal with if it's in your back yard, the boiler inspector doesn't come knocking. And if you're taking kids for ride in the same yard, they might show up asking to look things over. But really, only if you have it out in the public, even then, maybe. Certainly in that tractor event in 2001, people later said Ohio had very lax regulations for inspections, less so than in surrounding states.
I would have thought Medina would have required the same oversight that most steam locomotives now have to deal with.
How about those small scale ride-on steam locos (roughly about 'old GI Joe' scale) people straddle? Yeah, they're over-engineered due to the scale of the materials, but surely, one of those must have had a crown sheet somewhere in history. Something that size with that pressure would have the concussive force and shrapnel greater than that of a small military cluster bomblet. I can't imagine that it hasn't happened somewhere by now. Will that be a Gettysburg event if someday- God forbid- one goes off at the head of a train full of kids (or even worse, while passing another such train), as many of them are run on club 'layouts'?
One part about that confuses me in general as several people with small locos also have just enough track to gain almost a walking speed before they have to shut her down again.
I think of all the effort that goes into a steam locomotive and nobody thought, "Hey, maybe we should have somewhere to run this"?
At one point years ago, I was seriously contemplating a narrow gauge mining loco (with a V-8, not steam) someone offered to sell me and immediately, I started looking into rails, ties and even called a shed maker to see if they could make one for me that looked like a depot. At the time, there was a question on if our employer would move the office in a few years, so I backed out of the project, but any moment I wasn't working on the loco, I would have been adding track!
I've seen so many people like this with steam engines and no place to run them. Hey, to each their own, but it never made sense to me.

That was also a couple of hard bounces on the pilot beam. That can’t good for the frame. Oh well, if he wants to slide around on his own property and wreck it and maybe take out himself and/or a few friends with a boiler explosion, who am I to tell him no. Darwinism may win here.

Lee, Medina was in fact the "Gettysburg event" of the traction world. The great difference was the steam railroad world had previously had Federal oversight (ICC/FRA) where the steam traction world did not. The steam traction world did and still does come under state and sometimes county jurisdiction so there is not one single agency that will affect all operators.

I don't know how involved you are or have been in steam traction but from personal experience I can report that many jurisdictions tried actively to eliminate all traction engines following that incident. There were a few state boiler inspectors, including one state chief inspector, who told gatherings of engine owners they wanted "To fill them all with cement". This led to the formation of many state traction engine associations who have been actively working with the inspection departments and state agencies to not only educate the owners and prospective engineers but the inspectors themselves. I'm in my second decade of helping to instruct at Steam Schools in 2 different states. It has become relatively common to have inspectors as students partly because we can give hands-on experience with riveted vessels. For a long time we were perceived as "A bunch of clod-kicker farmers who don't know anything" but in several jurisdictions we've been able to turn that around. In the same manner as rail preservation there are some good and some bad because the human animal is involved.

Traction engine inspections are headed toward uniformity but when was the last time you heard of an agency coming from each of the 50 states all agreeing on one set of rules? There are still states that don't have a formalized state inspection program for the traction engines.

You'd mentioned: That is an understatement. At the time there wasn't a formalized state requirement for traction engine boilers. That has since changed. They also now require an operator's license. There are several other states and Canadian provinces that require licensing. Some prior to but many since Medina.

I hope this helps shed a bit of light from a different perspective. It seems to be another case of "separated by a common language" similar to the US & UK.............mld

I read that and thought that you were thinking of me! When I started my narrow gauge adventure six years ago I only had enough track to put the locomotive on. We still have only several hundred feet of track but I find that I spend most of my time building more. Actually I just put in service another hundred feet of track this evening in anticipation of this weekend's operating session.