Gunpowder wagons

In the 1950 Rule Book the only ref to explosives I can find is that vehicles containing explosives must not be loose shunted. Strange, because a ex-Army Officer who worked middle-east railways told me that two empty wagons had to isolate a vehicle with explosives from the brake van, which I believe was true for petrol tanks too.

Ken.

It occurs to me that I remember reading somewhere that gunpowder explodes upwards (dont sit on the powder keg) rather than outwards. Thought it sounded silly, but if true the van would simply loose its roof.

Ken.

Right that's what I would expect, so, next question, were the roofs made much weaker than floor and sides? I've never seen a gunpowder van close up.

Ken.

Dear ken, I asked my instructor back in the 70´s about this and he said that they had strenghtened sides and bottoms and extremlemy weak rooves in order to direct the eplosion UP, this ws about 79 and as far as I know by then they were history, I looked through my guards handbook (handwritten under dictation!!) and there is no mention of gunpowder vans only about vehicles with toxic gases where the instructions were that driver and guard were totally forbidden to walk towards each other but were to protect the for and aft of the train, except in cases of extremnely minor leaks...what a minor leak was , wasnt dictated to us! Beowulf

I shouldn't think so, since the stronger you make the container, the bigger the "bomb" it would make. That's the whole principal behind gunpowder fuelled explosions. If you light gunpowder in the open it just goes "whoosh!", but then if you pack gunpowder into an inclosed space and seal it, _then_ light it, it goes "booom!"

As far as I know the only use gunpowder wagons had was to convey gunpowder from a to b, they had no (visible) re-inforcing to speak of.

FWIW military explosives tend to be far more powerful that the stuff available on the civilian market. It's also quite amazing what you can do with it - having been present when quarrying explosives were opened up and ignited in order to be used as firelighters.

The truly dangerous items are the detonators usually filled with some form of fulminate - in essence they provide the "little bang" that starts of the whole explosive cycle. Interesting experiment - if you ever get the opportunity, take a .22 round, pull out the bullet and then tip the propellant onto a dish. ignite the propellant with a match and it will burn very rapidly like a miniature volcano. Now take the casing, stretch out a large paper clip, hold it at arms length with the "hole" pointing backwards, make sure no one is stood in front of you and apply heat. The damned thing explodes and shoots forward PDQ - that's the fulminate igniting.

... where's all this leading? well explosives aren't usually all that dangerous and particularly in the case of civilian explosives you have to work hard to make them go bang - instead of simply burning - albeit fiercely. IOW it's a much safer material to transport than say many of the chemical compounds transported via rail so whilst I admit to know very little about the various rules imposed by the rail companies over the years hearing that gunpowder vans were coupled to other freight in the middle of (say) a mixed goods doesn't strike me as being either especially unusual or dangerous.

Thankyou Beowulf, that's what I wanted to hear.

I looked through my guards handbook (handwritten under

And they prayed for a cross wind presumably :)

Ken.