That time 491 almost killed me. | Stories From the Shop Ep. 2

what's up guys this is heis and welcome back to stories from the shop the first time we did this little series we talked about that SD40 that's full of poop which uh yeah that's a story and a half make sure you go check it out if you haven't seen it already but today I figured we'd talk about this little iron missile yeah yeah it doesn't look like a missile does it uh yeah it's not supposed to be one but it was and uh yeah it got a little dinged up so fun fact long time viewers of the channel have probably heard me tell this story it comes up on live streams and this is another one of those it's like yeah I should probably have a dedicated video for that so here we are this is that time that 491 almost killed me I almost met my maker and my maker is apparently a flexible stable cap so anyway this would have been like 2016 working at the Museum working on the 491. the Caps hadn't been taken off in a long time these are flexible stable caps Staples hold the boiler together if this doesn't make any sense go check out steam 101 Stables hold the boiler together and some of them are called flexible Staples where rather than being threaded in the Firebox and in the exterior boiler sheet they're only threaded into the Firebox and they've got a big head that allows the sheet to Pivot around it and when you get a big grid of those it allows for a little bit of rotation and freedom in the boiler sheet which is really good because as the engine expands as it heats up that means that you're less likely to break stuff so it was a modern locomotive thing to have lots of flexible Staples you look at pictures of any super powered steam they got thousands of them well 491 with a boiler originally built in 1902 it was a little bit before that and the railroad modified it to have 42 flexible Stables so very few of them and they're all in the throat so the boiler has the barrel and then there's the Firebox behind the barrel and that transition imagine that you extruded my face that transition where the Firebox is back here it's called the throat the throat sheet of the of the boiler so we're talking about the very front of the Firebox or right underneath the boiler Barrel there's 42 of these guys that live down in there and they hadn't been taken off since presumably the last time the railroad did it in the 50s and so these were very stubborn anything that sits for a long time particularly if it's been heat cycled a bunch doesn't like to come apart and so I had about three foot of wrench and a big socket and it was still not enough so I was applying heat with the torch when you heat metal up with a torch it expands and it makes things come apart usually a fair bit easier you've probably seen the memes of can't be tight if it's a liquid well there is the intermediate step of it probably can't be tight if it's too big so getting these guys to Glow a dull cherry red and then they spun off with not too much effort I was going down the column on the outside of all these stays and there's probably seven or eight of them on the outside column there and I'm in the pit and the Wheel sets right behind me I'm standing on a box in the inspection pit the axle's running right behind me there's a wheel here and a wheel here three foot Narrow Gauge they're less than three feet apart on the back side of the wheel like kind of crouched up between the brake riging with my oxy acetylene torch like Right Here Right Heating these guys up and taking them off well it was kind of a rush job at the time and uh I do want to say before we go any further like I am so thankful for the museum safety culture these days it is such a great place to work and we like take a huge pride in the safety of what we do um and not necessarily back then however but time and things and people change and so it was kind of just uh hey look we need to get this done kind of quick let's go and do this thing okay boiler is drained right oh yeah yeah it got drained okay cool I didn't check I didn't verify and they had opened up the the blow down to drain the boiler which is almost all the way to the bottom of the boiler itself on the exterior of the Firebox but k-37 Firebox is flat blow Downs here and then there's a little slope at the front and that means that if you want to drain the boiler all the way you have to pull the two Corner mud ring washout plugs out locomotives have many plugs that you have to remove on a 31 day inspection so you can get in there and host things out and clean it out and in order to drain it you have to pull those two plugs and then usually you have to put like a sock or a rag or something in there that Wicks the rest of the moisture out because the plug can't be all the way down at the bottom because geometry and the plugs are still in and I didn't check I didn't bother it was a hey let's get it done fast it's no big deal this is just a piece there's just a part it just comes off right it shouldn't be able to seal anything there shouldn't be any risk of what like that was not even a consideration in my head and so I get down to this one the last one in that column which was in the water space and something about me heating it must have expanded the bolt itself or something and there's water sitting up against this and things must have swelled and seated because that water flashed to steam and there was no place for it to go and I had the torch on there for maybe 15 or 20 seconds and it sounded like somebody put a shotgun right in front of my face and fired it like I've never experienced anything that loud ever before or ever again it was incredible um I was in shock immediately this thing was gone there was a smoking hole in front of me I don't remember shutting off my oxyacetylene torch but I did it got blown out and I real quick like shut it off I had no no clue what just happened this was gone smoking hole I can't hear anything like I am absolutely Deaf from the Shockwave my boss at the time came running into the roundhouse he was in his office which is in the viewer gallery there was two closed doors between him and me and the viewing Gallery at the Museum is almost perfectly soundproof he came running in because he thought the acetylene bottle had exploded that's how loud it was it was ridiculous there was a radio playing music like 10 feet away and the speaker cones got blown out of it from the pressure wave 10 feet away so that's why this year so I have tinnitus in that ear by the way because I was sitting there like that and this thing went kabang right next to me so that's the thing that I have to live with forever and you guys know that I love music and all that sort of stuff so that's a fun challenge that I get to live with as a constant in that ear so you know that's uh I'm fortunate that that's all that it is though because this thing popped out it hit the driver the number four Drive wheel and it bounced out had it bounced in there was nowhere but through my face that it would have gone and this is you know quarter inch I don't know if it's iron or steel but you can see how much it deformed it's insane like it it broke this significantly and it left a little Mark on the drive wheel too we didn't find this for a little while it actually bounced over from stall one to stall five it was across the shop like a hundred feet away had no idea found it the one it was like oh my God that's that's where that landed that's insane so the power of steam is a very terrifying thing steam Under Pressure can move pistons and move trains and it can also rocket little pieces of metal uh very quickly right next to you and that was terrifying but yeah I keep it around I'm glad we did find it this is uh proof of my mortality I could have been uh that could have been the end for heist as as a young a young lad learning to work on Steam so the the thing to learn and the thing to take away from this story is always check there is no job that you do in anything that you do anything you're involved with nothing is worth rushing always do the check always pause always rebrief do the thing the task will get done there's no like there's no need that is greater than your safety oh it needs to get done fast okay that's great I'm still gonna go check those plugs oh hey look those plugs are in it only it would have only taken five minutes to grab a socket and run those plugs out but didn't do the check and that was on me that was you know on the safety culture at the time but like I said it's completely different now the Museum's a fantastic place to work I don't want anyone to get that that image in their head that the safety culture is bad because it's really been a marked huge difference and also I mean same for me I was young and dumb and did all sorts of stupid crap when I first started working on this stuff like oh we need to put the Bell on the 491 let me just climb up the thing with the Bell on my shoulder despite it weighing 100 pounds and I'm climbing up with no fall protection and using one hand and two points of contact like yeah guilty of doing all that stuff but learn these lessons learn these lessons from the people that come before you and the dumb bird people on the internet that's me uh learn that lesson your safety is critically important so thankfully 491 didn't kill me and she just messes with me in other ways these days but some people say Safety First some people say safety third all I'm going to say is hey make sure you take care of you and it's your responsibility you gotta watch out for yourself and watch out for other folks and if you see something say something and pause stop the work rebrief like that's the most important thing so hope you guys like the story thanks for watching [Music] good [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Hyce

Views: 20,842

Keywords: trains, railroad, how trains work, steam trains, train game, train crash, train wreck

Id: pjr54rjcy2g

Length: 12min 16sec (736 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 04 2023