. The Locomotive . * I stepped outside to look up at the valve which was about twelvefeet above the boiler and while looking at it the blowing few minutes later I walked in and looked at the pressure showed 140 pounds. I immediately started an investigation todetermine the reason for the safety valve remaining closed with thispressure behind it and, when I climbed up on the boiler, I soon dis-covered the cause. There I found a gate valve, closed tight, in theline leading to the safety valve. Apparently the engineer had closed it when I stepped outside for justthen I saw him
. The Locomotive . * I stepped outside to look up at the valve which was about twelvefeet above the boiler and while looking at it the blowing few minutes later I walked in and looked at the pressure showed 140 pounds. I immediately started an investigation todetermine the reason for the safety valve remaining closed with thispressure behind it and, when I climbed up on the boiler, I soon dis-covered the cause. There I found a gate valve, closed tight, in theline leading to the safety valve. Apparently the engineer had closed it when I stepped outside for justthen I saw him come around tothe front of the boiler, glance atthe pressure gauge, and thenrush up the ladder to open thegate valve. This I cautionedhim to do slowly as a suddenrelease of the pressure on theboiler might have caused anexplosion. As soon as a fewturns had been given the gatevalve to open it the safety valvebegan to blow and continued todo so until the pressure wasreduced to 100 pounds. (^V—Sofety Volv*Cfltc Valve. 232 THE LOCOMOTIVE. [October. A sketch of the boiler with its improper pipe connections isgiven in Fig. 2. In addition to what is shown there I might mentionthat the blow off line had been piped outside the building where atrap had been formed so that any water accumulating in it wouldfreeze very readily. A man, in blowing down the boiler, would havebeen placed in a very dangerous position. A short time later I had to make an internal inspection of thissame boiler and, although the engineer said that he had just hadthe boiler open the day before and that I could take his word as toits good condition, I found it to be in very poor shape. Although nogreat amount of scale was present, a considerable amount of corro-sion and a number of cracks in different parts of the boiler werefound. When this information was given the superintendent heordered the boiler out of service. Inspections are of value not only in the detection of dangerousconditions but also in preventing u
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