Dan Markoff Wrote:
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> 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
I believe that the second instance was at the C&TS, not the D&S. G Mark Ray, president of the Heritage Rail Alliance, was in a similar frame of mind when he found out about it in conference call with the FRA, resulting in his editorials in the HRA newsletter titled "Code of Silence". The person burned, I heard (so take that for how little it is worth), was attempting to tighten a leaking belly plug from the pit when it blew out on him.