NDG FYI. Old film water heater explosions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pVQryuKMj8 Thank You.
Oh great, something else to worry about...
Tiawan is located in an earthquake zone and may also be sugject to continental drift. When I watched the bridge collaspe thought that maybe span distance increased causing arch support to collaspe ? Although far fetched maybe ?
I've always wondered how the guy got it out of the car when he got home!
I hope he had some husky sons or some very friendly neighbors!
Flintlock76I was at a rail museum in Florida 20 years ago and they'd just sold a steam locomotive bell out of their gift shop and asked me if I could help them and the customer get it loaded in his car. Of course I agreed. Man! You talk about heavy! It had to be close to 300 pounds! And it did have a sweet tone!
Man! You talk about heavy! It had to be close to 300 pounds!
And it did have a sweet tone!
Tell me about it! My father had one that moved along with the family through several moves. When he was getting remarried and downsizing he sold it, rather than gift it to me. Moved the thing around various locations in the houses we lived in - it was HEAVY! It always stayed on the ground floor no matter where we were living - too heavy to move up or down stairs.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Classic Trains "Steam Glory 3" from 2012 had a great article on those CPR 0-6-6-0's that were converted later to 2-10-0's. The whole issue was a keeper, it never made it to my recycle bin, as a matter of fact I'm looking at it right now.
I don't know if it's still available as a back-issue but if it is grab it before it's gone!#
Locomotive bells? Here's some folks that'll tell you everything you want to know. Maybe more than you want to know. http://www.railroadiana.org
I was at a rail museum in Florida 20 years ago and they'd just sold a steam locomotive bell out of their gift shop and asked me if I could help them and the customer get it loaded in his car. Of course I agreed.
# I just checked, it's still available, print and digital editions.
OvermodAh, wait. Steel tied arch. Tie failure. Fits the observation. Be interesting to see exactly where, and how, it let go simultaneously like this.
Looked like the two supports adjacent to the middle two supports gave way from their connection to the arch first - then the rest followed and the roadway dropped away.
I was able to run the 2nd posted YouTube video and stop it with my mouse in less than 1 second increments. I wonder what method was used to secure the support cables to the arch.
tree68I'm guessing that only one element initially failed. However, since most everything is designed to the Nth these days, with no over-capacity at all, once one corner failed, the rest let go in rapid succession.
"Ties" in question would be tendons through the roadway beam segments, acting to 'tie' the base of the arch together, but technically that would imply suspenders placed periodically along the arch acting vertically on the roadway segments to keep them aligned. I see no such suspenders in this design, however, and if there were, they would all have to let go simultaneously to produce the graceful curve with which the roadway was observed to fail. What I observe looks like a near-instantaneous failure of the longitudinal post-tensioning in the deck (which keeps all the segments straight and in line), and I think this does indeed show evidence of the same kind of massive underestimation of the actual load displayed by Gillum et al. in the amended hanger design in Kansas City and discussed in the 'lessons learned' aftermath. If a 'plurality' of elements that each happens to be ridiculously underdesigned is combined, failure of one often leads to massive chain-reaction failure of the overall structure, often with the speed and catastrophicity we see here.
Overmod Ah, wait. Steel tied arch. Tie failure. Fits the observation. Be interesting to see exactly where, and how, it let go simultaneously like this.
Ah, wait. Steel tied arch. Tie failure. Fits the observation. Be interesting to see exactly where, and how, it let go simultaneously like this.
I'm guessing that only one element initially failed. However, since most everything is designed to the Nth these days, with no over-capacity at all, once one corner failed, the rest let go in rapid succession.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
NDGBridge Collapses. Lands on Boats.
Failure mode of that bridge is highly interesting, as none of it is 'what I would expect' from an obvious fabrication problem in the design. The arch itself never fails, in fact never even visibly distorts. The transition to the 'Y' portals at the end, which is where I would have thought a catastrophic failure like this would originate, does not appear to fail before ground impact. The roadway does not drop under the point load of the truck -- I don't see this even slightly; it drops in a continuous curve from the center, just as if all the supporting cables were to lose tension simultaneously, and essentially pulls the edges away from their supports before the superstructure comes down.
Is this actually some kind of 'inverted suspension bridge' where the load is actually taken by tendons inside the cast 'arch' superstructure which, by failing, would simultaneously slacken all the vertical suspenders? Could all the deck attach points for the verticals have been designed in tension, like those idiots did at Kansas City, so that 'sufficient' failure would cause them all to pop nearly simultaneously?
NDGAnother, In Missouri. https://www.missourinet.com/2019/10/02/backwater-from-flood-debris-causes-rail-bridge-to-collapse-in-north-missouris-brunswick/ https://www.centralmoinfo.com/2019/10/01/brunswick-railroad-bridge-collapes-access-is-closed/ Rails were cut. No Jordan Rails. https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Brunswick,+MO+65236,+USA/@39.4261,-93.1577424,2117m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x87c2577581218b23:0x1ef552486eaa7bf!8m2!3d39.4233576!4d-93.1304782 https://www.google.ca/maps/@39.4304033,-93.1598732,3a,60y,172.45h,81.92t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sU3clBk9t23Ry9BofLuKBxA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 Thank You.
Troubled Bridge over Rushing waters
That Missouri railroad bridge collapse is understandable, considering how much flood debris was piled up against it, but that Taiwan bridge collapse? Pathetic!
The Romans built bridges 2,000 years ago that are still standing!
Oh yeah, the HO stringlining video. One picture's worth 1,000 words. I learned to put the light cars at the end of the train playing with Lionels almost 60 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f11nGRN-9gs
Has it really been that long? A friend and I visited Toronto in 1983 and the CLRV was the hot new replacement for the PCC's. They looked sharp in TTC colors and rode well.
Thanks 'Dude and Agent Kid, I learned something tonight!
SD70DudeThe Wootten firebox was designed to burn large amounts of anthracite waste, a terrible fuel. Poor-quality Canadian prairie coal (half a step above lignite) might have been well suited to this firebox design.
There is terrible fuel and terrible fuel -- and railroad bean counters back in the day would likely have been ACUTELY aware which kinds of terrible cheap fuel were available to them and what this would mean to motive power.
Anthracite is nearly pure carbon, so the heat content even in culm is fairly high: the problem is that you need good oxygen supply, but not too good or it chills things down, and a good deal of time for the reaction to 'go'. It helps somewhat that the carbon in most culm is 'slack', or very fine particulates with large surface area and comparatively light weight. It does not help that some of the unburnable crap in culm may cause clinker. Sinclair's History of the Locomotive Engine has many details about what it took to build a successful 'stone coal' burner in the first place, and a culm burner after that.
The idea of a very large grate area with comparatively thin fire is part of the Wootten idea, and originally so was a comparatively low and wide crownsheet to absorb radiant flux from that fire. There were two fireholes on some of these, not so much for 'two firemen' as to simplify dressing and maintaining a fire on such a wide grate.
Notably the rebuilt Reading T-1 4-8-4s reused the fireboxes from 2-8-0s ... but did not burn any combination of anthracite in them even though the region traverses some of the most important anthracite regions in the United States. (That came as something of a surprise to me, until you look at the arrangements that would have been necessary to provide a firegrate that would hold up to stoker firing of anthracite at the necessary rate... not a happy idea!)
Lignite or subbituminous is another story entirely, especially if there is still considerable entrained water in the fuel. A very competent analysis of the sort of thing that burns this fuel effectively was done in Ireland, of all places, in the 1950s with Oliver Bulleid. This fuel is at the opposite end of the spectrum, with comparatively little elemental carbon but plenty of ash constituents and often heroically long spark burning time. You need a large grate area here to get enough heat output for locomotive steam-generation rates, but in my opinion this fuel is best burned with significant primary air and with the fuel at least levitated into a plume volume so it dries and ignites relatively quickly (and, ideally, will burn through to ash before huge amounts of volcanic sparks are blown from the front end, something that often doesn't happen) so you'll have a much larger firebox volume above the 'grate' than in a Wootten design. (A further fun thing is the Fuller-Lehigh arrangement for lignite burning that was in the Snuff Dipper story -- this was an interesting technical achievement, but would you want to have to run one as commodity power in general service?)
The AAR, I think, was right to consider good-grade, properly-washed, about 2" sized bituminous the most reasonable locomotive fuel for big road power; about the only thing I'd prefer would be briquettes with dolomite and some other 'clean coal' constituents as a relatively shockproof coating. (With internal-combustion locomotives doing the switching and many of the smaller jobs that little locomotives previously would have done...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthracite,_Alberta
The largest Canadian anthracite deposits are in far northwestern British Columbia, and have never been mined commercially. There is currently a proposed mine for that area, but so far only small test batches of coal have been produced.
The Wootten firebox was designed to burn large amounts of anthracite waste, a terrible fuel. Poor-quality Canadian prairie coal (half a step above lignite) might have been well suited to this firebox design.
Or maybe the new owner did get a good price, and never ran the locomotive hard enough for the poor performance on different fuels.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Flintlock76to my knowledge there's no anthracite in Canada
That is not correct.
Coal types are hard to spell so I will copy a line from the Coal Association of Canada website:
Canada has anthracite, bituminous, sub-bituminous, and lignite coal deposits. More than 90% of Canada’s coal deposits are located in western provinces, which provides a strategic advantage because of the close proximity of west coast ports.
I could'nt find production numbers on short notice. Hope this helps the discussion.
Bruce
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
Flintlock76Unless they got it dirt cheap I can't imagine why Boyle Construction purchased a Camelback locomotive. The things were designed to burn anthracite coal and to my knowledge there's no anthracite in Canada. That doesn't mean you couldn't burn other types of coal in it, just not as effectively.
To bean counters coal is coal - it's black and dirty. Phoebe Snow not withstanding.
Unless they got it dirt cheap I can't imagine why Boyle Construction purchased a Camelback locomotive. The things were designed to burn anthracite coal and to my knowledge there's no anthracite in Canada. That doesn't mean you couldn't burn other types of coal in it, just not as effectively.
Where'd it come from? The NYO&W, the Erie, the Lackawanna, the Jersey Central, the Lehigh and New England are all possibilities. It's an oldie though, square valve chests and no air reservoirs on top of the firebox.
That photo selection does have some neat-looking little saddletankers!
Paul of CovingtonYou had to stay alert to survive back then.
Comedian on FB - "The dumb ones didn't..."
Monkey bars, bailing out of the swings at the playground, no bike helmets, no seat belts. It's a wonder some of us did...
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