Most of the comments on Liveleak say it's fake.

In my experience, if both the conductor and brakeman brace the nut form both sides, they can be thrown off pretty easily, no matter how stubborn.

Also, even if the wax were kept molten long enough, does molten wax have any penetrating power at all?

If the Strasburg shop crew were to independently verify this, I might believe it. Otherwise, not worth wasting my time (and our shop buys Kroil by the case).

Al Stangenberger
Western Railway Museum

Well, I'll tell you, it is possible to have too much heat. Out at IRM years ago I was struggling to get the nut (maybe 10-32?) off the heating element of the shop coffee pot, when the guy using the cutting torch pre-heats to heat and loosen nuts on something said, "Here, gimme that!" He must have been running a bit too much OX, (oxidizing flame) because as soon as he played the flame on the bottom of the aluminum pot, it vaporized, thereby negating any reason to try to replace the element!

My mother told me this, surely apocryphal, story: In the Middle Ages the scholars would sit around reading Aristotle trying to determine the number of teeth a horse has, without success. For some reason the stable boy overheard the conversation and went out to the stable and counted the teeth - something that hadn't occurred to the scholars to do. I'm on vacation away from rusty bolts, but has anybody tried to do the stable boy routine to determine if the candle wax works or not?

Seems like it would be hard to do in true "mythbusters" fashion. (i.e. a controlled experiment). You'd have to find nuts that were all rusted to the same degree, and then try some without anything, a few with just the flame, some with the flame and wax...

Would be interesting, but a lot of work.