Marty in CA

[Mookie]

Marty (or anyone else) - got a question from home - they had an explosion at Roseville in the Viet Nam era - ammunition train blew up? Any history? If I got my facts straight you work either at Roseville or in that area?

Jen

[corwinda]

It was in the news a few years ago. Seems some bombs from the shipment got buried and they dug them up when UP rebuilt the yard.

[RudyRockvilleMD]

I may be able to shed a little more light on the Roseville explosion which occurred during the Viet Nam era because I was peripherially involved in explosive effects at the time.

An ammunition train was carrying bombs from the Naval Ordnance Plant in Hawthorne, NV in DODX boxcars with journal bearing trucks and wooden floors to one of the west Coast ports for shipment to Viet Nam. Some of the DODX boxcars developed hot boxes enroute which went undetected, and the heat from the hotboxes started fires in the car floors, which also were not noticed, and heated the bombs enough to cause them to explode. The blast waves from the explosions were strong enough to shatter the glass in the windows of nearby structures

[Mookie]

Rick and Rudy - thanx - this is exactly what I was looking for.

Jen

[Anonymous]

Hi Jen,
Rick and Rudy are both correct with their info but when the bombs started going off the train was in the narrowest part of the yard.When it was all over, there was bomb craters 20 feet deep, half of the yard was gone and so was half of the little town of Antelope. People were finding parts of boxcars 2 miles away.
marty

[Mookie]

I don't remember hearing about it, but my favorite companion asked if you knew about it. That's quite a tragedy.

Thanks

Jen

[Anonymous]

I was about 8yrs. old when it happened and i remember the house shaking and the windows rattling. When i went outside i could hear the bombs going off. My house was 30mi. away.
marty