The Locomotive
by Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company

Check out this report from 1890 on boiler safety. Scary!


https://archive.org/details/locomotive1 ... otive+1890

An interesting report, it was interesting to meet him.

I especially like the story of the boiler failure that blew a lot of pins into a very fat man. Bottom of page 27. That teach him to store pins next to a boiler.

A friend sent the following from the 1904 British Columbia boiler inspection report.

"A lever safety valve on an old locomotive boiler was found, at first inspection, to be seriously overloaded. The plant belonged to and was operated by a family who had very little experience with steam. The seat of the valve was very much worn and leaked considerably, and they, being short of steam, thought that the valve was blowing off too soon, and proceeded to place additional weights on the lever, regardless of consequences. The lever, as I found it, was weighted by the original ball, two others each equal in weight to the first, a freight car buffer spring and a large crowbar bent at an angle and hung over the rest; yet, with all this load, the valve apparently leaked, for the steam still escaped, but not sufficiently to keep the boiler pressure from rising above the desired point. A girl of 15 years acted as engineer, the rest of the family performing the other duties necessary in connection with the sawmill. The engineer, while not possessing much mechanical knowledge, showed a fair amount of intelligence. She knew the number of revolutions of the engine and the number of tubes in the boiler and always stood by to see that the pressure did not go beyond 130 pounds, as that was considered the danger point. When that figure was reached it was her practice to turn on the feedwater and then raise the bunch of weights with a pole. This boiler, at the time of my visit, had been in operation about five months; it was purchased second-hand and figured for a pressure of 70 pounds."


Welcome to the days of the Wild West of steam boilers. Report from the year 1904.

One of my favorite trade journals from way back when, "The Safety Valve", would feature almost an entire page of boiler explosions in every issue. Quite a few took place at sawmills. I'm surprised there were any left!

Here's an entire book from 1860 of explosions in England.

https://books.google.com/books?id=MSVcA ... 's&f=false

And a couple of other interesting books on boilers and explosions.

https://books.google.com/books?id=rT8OA ... &q&f=false


https://books.google.com/books?id=IrNXA ... ns&f=false

I remember reading a very old rule book and one of the rules was the railroad employees must be wearing shoes.

Don't laugh. I knew a guy on the Soo Line, sadly no longer with us, who, in the thirties, bought a pair of boots for one of his section men. Those were hard times, and sometimes footwear was not the first place money needed to go.

A few tips from an 1896 Ashton Valve catalog about boiler safety.

http://railroadfan.com/phpbb/download/f ... &mode=view

http://railroadfan.com/phpbb/download/f ... &mode=view

http://railroadfan.com/phpbb/download/f ... &mode=view

Well I guess it still goes on.


https://www.achrnews.com/articles/87615 ... r-is-human

Archive.org has many issues of the Locomotive journal, put out by Hartford Steam Boiler


https://archive.org/search.php?query=ha ... on&sin=TXT

The cause and preventive of steam boiler explosions ..1855
by Harshman, Jacob. [from old catalog]



https://archive.org/details/causepreven ... explosions

I'll bet these 1910 boiler explosion articles had the Hartford company's interest.

Notice that they were ALL externally fired return flue boilers! The fire on the outside of the drum puts a lot more stress on the shell by causing a much greater expansion. In a locomotive type boiler the shell can only reach the temperature of the steam inside of it. Much less expansion stress.
M. Nix