I just went through an FRA inspection with EUREKA in preparation for the Victorian Iron Horse Roundup. She passed. During the course of the inspection, the FRA inspector had me do something that I had not been required to do in 30 years, After the hydro, he told me to pull out all the plugs for a thread inspection. I did as he requested, but asked him why and if this was a new procedure. He said it came about because in the recent past the Cass railroad and the D&S both had failures of the washout plugs, while the locomotives were UNDER STEAM. Apparently one worker was seriously injured. He further told me that one of these guys was tightening the plugs with an impact wrench. I was really shocked. One of the cardinal rules I was taught decades ago was to never tighten a plug while under steam, and never use an impact wrench for such a job.
The point of mentioning this, is that I never heard a word of this from a single soul before the inspector mentioned this to me. I would think that this type of information should be posted on this forum or elsewhere. In aviation periodicals, they post all kinds of information about accidents and the causes thereof with the expectation that the public will learn something useful from those experiences. In this forum there is a great opportunity to get this kind of information out there and learn from others mistakes. Pictures of trains and locomotives are nice, as are discussions about boiler colors. But, none of that advances safety. I would like to see a lot more about safety and sharing that kind of information rather than whether a boiler had a green jacket at sometime in its history. Any thoughts?
Dan Markoff
