What's up with the trains

[ElAurens]

Result of boiler explosion on a C&O H8 loco. These had the largest boilers ever put on a steam locomotive...

June 9, 1953 - Chesapeake and Ohio Railway 2-6-6-6 “Allegheny” number 1642 suffers a boiler explosion. All three head-end crew members are killed when the cab is blown in one piece 200 feet (60 m) in the air and 300 yards (275 m) off the mainline into the adjacent river. The boiler is blown off the running gear and flips end for end, coming to rest 600 feet (180 m) ahead of the train. The blast is blamed on a faulty feedwater injector and/or cold water pump.

[DayGlow]

Well I'm thankful that we have working station clocks vs trains blowing up good

[CaptainDoggles]

Originally Posted by Sven

No kidding. Do people actually think a bullet can knock a train locomotive over? Do some math. What's the momentum of a 20mm round? What's the inertia of a train? Here's a hint: One is many orders of magnitude greater than the other.

If part of the train is exploding and the explosion pushes it off the tracks then the explosion pushes the train off the tracks, not the bullets.

This is the same as that "50 cals flipping over tiger tanks" nonsense.

[DayGlow]

I'll take real pilots testimony over an interweb hero any day on both accounts

[CaptainDoggles]

Pilots can be mistaken. You're probably one of those guys that reads an account saying "My spitfire turned inside the 109" without any info as to speed, altitude, or even which spitfire or which 109, and then decides that ALL spitfires must out-turn ALL 109s under ALL conditions.

That's the problem with blindly following pilot accounts.

It's not interweb heroics, it's mathematics. Math doesn't change from the 1940s to today. Memories given in post-war interviews do change.

[furbs]

50 cals can flip Tigers right over!!

[DayGlow]

Originally Posted by CaptainDoggles

Pilots can be mistaken. You're probably one of those guys that reads an account saying "My spitfire turned inside the 109" without any info as to speed, altitude, or even which spitfire or which 109, and then decides that ALL spitfires must out-turn ALL 109s under ALL conditions.

That's the problem with blindly following pilot accounts.

It's not interweb heroics, it's mathematics. Math doesn't change from the 1940s to today. Memories given in post-war interviews do change.

So our heros are liars then? How can we believe they shot a plane down, they could have been mistaken, hell they were probably in the infantry through the war and forgot and now believe they flew planes.

[CaptainDoggles]

Did I say they were liars? Don't put words in my mouth, son.

I said they can be mistaken.

[Sven]

Originally Posted by furbs

50 cals can flip Tigers right over!!

I can even flip a King tigers over with a well aimed fart, Yankee P51 pilots sure as hell could!

I mean c'mon, Yankees won the war right?

[ParaB]

Why shouldn't a 0.50cal throw a train off the tracks? Just look at what Mustangs armed with 0.50cals did to both the Bismarck and the Tirpitz! Or when they totally flipped over a KingTiger in Normandy who landed on Rommel himself, killing him.