welcome in question was the chesapeake in ohio one six four two they were classed as h8 alleghenys
and they were two six six sixes these were big big big steam engines and they were articulated
guys doing this is the second one that i'm talking about that exploded under your watch and the last
one and this one aren't the only ones like cpr has a lot of sunken trains we've been over that
and we keep going over it and and british rail has just a lot of bad diesels especially in the 60s it
seems to be their thing was chesapeake and ohio's thing blowing up their steam engines is that just
how you get your jollies i just i just wanna it's just a weird thing that it's you again it is kind
of where i'm at with this but whatever out of the types credit the h8 alleghenies were incredibly
good locomotives they were large so they were very very very fuel consuming the bigger engines tend
to consume more fuel but they were powerful capable of pulling incredibly long trains
without any need for assistance and considering they operated in the appalachian mountains
that uh that was needed they needed to be strong and they were they were they were great great
steam trains but you may be wondering well if the these trains were so good why did it blow up well
honestly the failure itself was the same as the last one yep it was the crown sheet again i told
you this thing is mission critical and it's very easy to cause a major chain reaction if you don't
keep it wet and in one six four two's case once again the crown sheet was allowed to become dry
get red hot and when water was put back inside its chain reaction was set off resulting in a horrific
explosion but the reason that this happened isn't as clear as last time last time it was
the engineer's fault he simply didn't put water in it though some people pointed out he may have been
trying a technique where the engineer and the fireman will intentionally let the water level
drop in an effort to create more steam pressure this may be possible given that locomotive was
pulling an incredibly long train up a grade so it would have needed the extra power but i'd
argue the cnot ones were known to pull trains even longer than the one it was pulling believe
it or not they were incredibly powerful steam trains there was no reason to push it given
that it was pulling a train it was rated to be able to handle so unless there was something
weird going on that nobody knows about or the engineer was just trying to build up extra speed
who knows but that might be a more likely case as to why he allowed you know the water to to go
a little bit lax but obviously he did it too much because you know kaboom in this case though that
is not what occurred 1642 was in west virginia at the time on june 9 1953 at the time of the
accident it was pulling 123 loaded cars as well as two that were empty but the adjusted tonnage
would have been about 10 500 so quite a lot of weight but this locomotive over this part of the
division was rated to be able to pull at least 11 500 so even though this train was enormous the h8s
were designed to handle this level of weight on this terrain so what did happen i mean we know the
water got too low and the train exploded and yeah it exploded all right holy crap didn't explode
the explosion was so violent not only did it kill the three crew members the driver of the firemen
and the front brakeman but it actually tossed the boiler up and over and i feel a need to stress
that this explosion through the boiler this is a huge locomotive it's a mallet type it has two
sets of driving wheels these are not small trains by any switch the imagination and the explosion
was so violent it was able to throw the boiler as well as push the cab slightly backwards but
that seemed relatively minor compared to the you know boiler that was just tossed like a ragdoll
unlike the last one there were no witnesses to the accident since all three crew members were killed
so all this information is coming from this report filed by the interstate commerce commission or icc
the icc seemed pretty content to simply say yeah they didn't put enough water in the boiler and it
blew up uh then that that that was pretty much it but that wasn't enough for the families of the men
involved according to the family of the engineer they felt that the locomotive itself wasn't being
properly maintained and they even mentioned that some of the other crews that also operated
this engine complained that some of the gauges weren't operating correctly and even the icc
points out that a few witnesses state that there were multiple tests and retests of the
inner workings of the water system including the gauges and the pumps on this particular locomotive
a foreman at thurman west virginia stated that when the engine stopped to take on coal there
right before the explosion happened the engineer actually asked him to look at the cold water pump
governor and see if it was stuck for reference a cold water pump governor is basically the
device used to control the pressure of the water going into the boiler and is in fact
not referring to a governor of a place called cold water pump just so we're clear he did look
at it and found that it was operational so he put it back in and then the engine blew up but
the fact that the engineer asked him to look at it suggests that he knew something weird was going on
he wouldn't have bothered the mechanic to look at something and he didn't really think there was a
problem so something was going wrong and the icc did note this and it really bothered the families
the wife of the engineer was awarded ten thousand dollars for his death which i guess in that era
was a lot more money but still your husband's dead and yeah but there wasn't sufficient evidence to
suggest anything was really going wrong with the engine and this is mostly to do with the fact that
there wasn't any evidence to look at after the engine exploded it would have been incredibly
difficult to tell if something was damaged prior to the explosion because everything was damaged
after the explosion so they were kind of in a bad spot trying to figure out exactly what would have
happened as far as 1642 well amazingly like the last one it was actually repaired and put back
into surface although this particular locomotive would eventually be scrapped fortunately in this
case a few of her sisters are still around 1601 was donated to the henry ford museum in
dearborn michigan where it's still on display indoors the other sister 1604 was sent around
quite a few places but now sits comfortably at the bno railroad museum in baltimore
and so ends our story of the largest steam locomotive explosion ever and seriously cno
please stop blowing up your steam trades it's really just
no stop doing it's one thing to throw them in the water but now we're just blowing them up like
things are getting extreme around here i i fully expect this series to wind up talking about a
train that was catapulted at the stratosphere or something like someone joked about that and
said that there was one that was flying i haven't found that yet i i have not determined that there
is currently a train orbiting the planet but if i ever do find that you will be the first to know
till next time this is darkness and i bid you all a fond farewell