Safety is serious with steam engines

bd

• Steam Engine explosion at Ohio State Fair

Bet alot of the old girls could not stand up to a serious inspection
and would result in a lot of them becomming static displays instead of old running equipment.

Bad deal all around....
Rich

Rich, on the steam engine note, what do you think could have caused it to explode? Any ideas?????

Regards,
Andy

As to the explosion.....
well it was a big BANG as I heard the news reporting it.

That leads me to think that a relief valve was full of crud or plugged off and may be a bad gauge
and of course too much fire, not enough release.

OR it could just have been at normal pressure
and had a rusted boiler that couldn't just take it.
and went with a bang....

My moneys on a wrong or bad or clogged relief
until I hear more though.

Rich

The tale I heard is that they ran it dry, in which case no safety valve would have helped.

I guess this reminds us of how very common boiler explosions were in the days of steam traction, and how even a licesning and regulation system is only as good as the people using it.

Sad business.

llater,

llamas

I was not there when the engine exploded, but I have heard that the police pulled the tractor over and held them up for quite awaile before letting them continue on to the fairgrounds. (they were not suppose to be driving it on city streets) I guess it blew up shortly after they entered the fairgrounds.

The cops followed them into the fairgrounds to cite them with a ticket. It would be interesting if the operators of this engine told the cops they had to get to the fairground before something happened, otherwise why would the cops wait and follow them to the fairgrounds, instead of giving them a ticket on the city street.

Maybe I'm just looking for someone to blame, there were a lot of people injured, not to mention the people who lost their lives.

I'm just thankful that more people were not injured, Medina is a small town, I'm almost afraid to go to the parts store and find out that one or more of the people that I deal with there were hurt.

Where was I when this happened? I was giving my 1 year old a ride on my 8N.