EXPLOSIONS.
It is easy to account for explosions of boilers on the hypothesis of too great pressure; but it is hardly ever very easy—frequently utterly impossible—to account for the causes which induce that overpressure. There are, to be sure, a number of reasons which may be advanced. The engineer may have screwed the scales down too much, and thus, the safety-valve not operating to let off the surplus steam, a force may be generated within the boiler of such tremendous power that the strong iron will be rent and torn like tissue-paper. This I say may occur, but in my experience I never knew of such a case. Then again, the water may get so low in the boiler that, on starting the engine and injecting cold water upon the hot plates, steam will be generated so suddenly as not to find vent, and in such enormous quantities and of so high a temperature as to explode the strongest boiler. Again, the water may be allowed to get low in the boiler, and the plates getting extremely hot, the motion of the train would generate steam enough by splashing water against them to cause an explosion. A proper care and due attention to the gauges would obviate this, and render explosion from these causes impossible. A piece of weak or defective iron, too, may have been put into the boiler at the time of its manufacture, and go on apparently safe for a long time, until at last it gives way under precisely the same pressure of steam that it has all along held with safety, or it may be with even less than it has often carried. How the engineer is to obviate this most fruitful cause of explosions, for the life of me I cannot see; still if his engine does blow up, everybody and their wives will believe that it happened entirely through his neglect. A person who has never seen an explosion, can form no idea of the enormous power with which the iron is rent. I saw one engine that had exploded, at a time too when, according to the oaths of three men, it had a sufficiency of water and only 95 lbs. of steam to the square inch, and was moving at only an ordinary speed, yet it was blown 65 feet from the track, and the whole of one side, from the "check joint" back to the "cab," was torn wide open—the lower portion hanging down to the ground, folded over like a table-leaf, and the other portion lay clear over to the other side, while from the rent, the jagged ends of more than half of the flues projected, twisted into innumerable shapes. The frame on that side was broken, and the ends stuck out from the side at right angles with their former position. I saw another, where the whole boiler front was blown out and the engine tipped clear over backwards on to the tender and freight car, where the engineer and fireman were found, crushed into shapeless masses, lying in the midst of the wreck. The engine Manchester exploded while standing at a station on the H. R. R. R., and killed two out of five men, who were standing together beside the tender. Two of those who were left, deposed, on oath, that not three minutes before the accident occurred, the engineer tried the water and found fully three gauges, while there was a pressure of only ninety-five pounds to the square inch, and it was blowing off.
How to account for it no one could tell, so every one who knew any thing whatever in regard to such things, called it "another of the mysterious visitations of God." But the newspapers called it an evidence of gross carelessness on the part of the engineer.
Several explosions have been known where the upper tubes were found unhurt, while the lower ones were, some of them, found badly burnt. The conclusion in these cases was that the tubes were too close together, and the water was driven away from them; consequently the starting of the engine, or the pumping of cold water into the boiler, was sufficient to cause an explosion.
HOW A FRIEND WAS KILLED.