241P17 Severe Accident

As has been explained above, not with a klinger glass. It wouldn't normally with a UK type glass either. However, I have been on a loco when a glass broke, and the ball valve on the water side did not seat. Obviously, the water flashes straight to steam when released, making it impossible to see or breathe in the cab. Quite disorientating, even on a loco you are well used to. Jacket over the head job to be able to get near it, and a colleague off to A & E to get a scalded hand seen too. If that had happened in a situation where there had been a "cab full", someone could easily have been seriously hurt.

 

The CFCC (the 241P preservation association) published here a press release regarding the accident.

Hopefully, the technical manager,the most severely wounded person should be out of the hospital by now. The other injured people left earlier after a half day or a few days of treatment. It seems people's morale is good and that everybody could recover without residua.

The origin of the leak fomes from the rupture of a small smoke tube starting from the lower left part of the front plate (I think I am not using the right words)
this tube suddenly broke over 75% of its circumference , in a spot located 1 cm away from the front plate. This part being the closest part of the boiler from the operators, this explains why so severely people were wounded.

9 people were present on the footplate : 2 mecanicians, 2 stokers and 5 technicians. These people were operating as per the schedule and regulations.
naturally, the locomotive's inspection book was well kept and it seems nothing could help anticipate such a sudden rupture. An inquiry is currently ongoing and should reveal the causes for such a rupture.

The accident was well handled and the wounded were quickly evacuated.

Regretfully, the general media coverage displayed the usual and gross journalistic incompetence of some daily publications. As an example, a locomotive was mistaken for a whole train, the total number of passengers (400) was mixed up with the number of technicians on the foot plate, or even the accident was styled as a boiler explosion. Reading all this in a sensational way, we could read that a whole train suffered a boiler explosion severly wounding many people among 400 passengers...

Thank you to the British and international train enthusiasts for keeping track of the 241P17

 

Thanks for the link and report. It will be interesting to see the results of the analysis of the boiler tube. Anyone know if the tube ends are swaged, beaded or have 'bottles' welded on the ends? (bottles is the name I used to hear in the power station boiler field to indicate the machined tube end fittings that were then welded to the tube plate)

 

There is some more information here in French, from last week's Dauphine:

http://www.ledauphine.com/savoie/20...la-locomotive-a-vapeur-les-scelles-sont-leves

 

... and a Google translation of the article:
http://translate.google.co.uk/trans...la-locomotive-a-vapeur-les-scelles-sont-leves

Richard

 

Actually the translation is so poor I found it easier to read the original article in French.