What's up with the trains
 

People go on and on about how he modelled the trains to the point of people joking that it's Train Simulator 2011.

Well I was doing a free flight over England in a BF-110 and low and behold I come across a train! Feeling frisky I decide to strafe it. I come in broadside and give the train itself the beans. 4 mgs and 2 cannon just blasting away. Well guess what? I stayed on the tracks! Pftt, some modeling. The weight of fire would easily derail it. WWII footage shows P-51s and 47s blowing trains off the tracks all the time. The BF-110 should surely do the same.

Even a new movie coming out shows how damaging .50cals are against trains, let alone explosive 20mm shells would be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4QNoTOz1U8

Kinda disappointed.

Hmmm, it would take more than the weight of aircraft cannon & machinegun fire to physically tip a locomotive weighing many tons off its rails. A secondary explosion, such as from an ammo car or fuel tanker may be enough to derail a moving train, especially if the force of that explosion was at an angle to the direction of the rails/direction of travel.

Movies also show people being launched many feet backwards by the force of a 12 gauge shotgun (both barrels, no less) but fail to show the shooter getting similarly launched in the opposite direction by an equal degree.

EDIT: This is my favourite train attack scene taken from Dark Blue World: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0stVlJXAsbQ

I cannot possibly imagine that George Lucas' research team didn't take that into consideration.

Besides, if .50's can disable Tiger tanks, they can derail trains, no sweat.

If your bullets hit in the firebox area of the boiler and the crown sheet ruptured then indeed the loco could be blown off the tracks by the almost instant conversion of all the water into live steam and then exhausted into the cab of the loco.

Not real good for the crew though...

Sorry but when I see this scene where the P51 turns basically on the spot ... pffff. Someone said George Lucas? I say tie fighter ... says it all ...

The pilot obviously mapped his trim on a slider... reasonable guess, at least.

Well, have to admit, I really hate CGI effects like that (Sooo tanfastic and completely overmodelled - overrules G-effects completely!!!).
And no, none of those action scenes seem realistic. The P-51 pilot that did that stalling wingshot wasn't even part of the Red Tail sqdr.


DK-nme

Indeed. With an abrupt boiler detonation the unleashed force is equal to a moon rocket. A loco with 100 tons of mass easily could be thrown a hundred of meters away.

Read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_explosion

True enough. I guess you could call that a "primary" explosion if caused by cannon/machine gun fire. I still maintain the weight of the projectiles themselves, even at a velocity of, say, 2,000+ ft/sec wouldn't be enough in themselves to topple or derail a locomotive. Unless the aircraft ran into it as well! LOL

But to the OP's post, if perforating the locomotive's boiler results in a catastrophic explosion.........then it SHOULD be launched off the rails in a huge plume of steam! I stand corrected on that. :)