Locomotive Engine Running and Management

by Angus Sinclair

BOILER EXPLOSIONS.

Certain mechanical empirics and impractical quasi-scientists have at various times attempted to surround the cause of boiler explosions with a halo of mystery. But our most accomplished scientists who have made the subject a special study, and our best mechanical experts who have devoted years of patient experiment and research to the investigation of boiler explosion, attribute the terrible phenomenon to intelligible causes alone. The conclusions of the practical part of the mechanical world are well summed in one sentence in one of the annual reports of the Master Mechanics’ Association. It says, “Explosions originate from over-pressure: it matters not whether the whole boiler, or a portion of it, is too weak to resist the pressure.”