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Fascinating. I have attached an excerpt from the 1901 Dayton WY quad map, showing the track alignment. If I understand your thinking, the train came down the grade from Parkman (looks like 5-mile Creek valley) and leveled out when it got to Ranchester / Tongue River valley. Then a slight upgrade just east. (I have circled roughly the location 1 1/2 to 2 miles east of Ranchester where the boiler explosion was reported to have occurred). Am I following correctly? I haven't been up that way for a couple of years (I'm in the Denver area) but I recall a big sweeping curve on I-90 at about that location, going down into the Tongue River valley. thanks Eric On Sun, Nov 24, 2019 at 9:57 AM Winton <runextra@gmail.com> wrote: Although a lot of Wyoming has bad water the route of this ill fated train has good water for 100 miles or more both east and west of Ranchester. However, no doubt that the said locomotive did operate in less than perfect water territory at times. As for the cause of the explosion, my speculation is that the train had just come down the 10 mile Parkman hill (1.25% grade) and thus the boiler water was at the front, low end of the boiler, uncovering the top of the firebox. The explosion location 1.5 miles east of Ranchester would be the first location the grade changed from downhill to slightly uphill to go over a small hump (now the east CTC switch of Ranchester siding). That caused the boiler water to rush from the front of the boiler to the rear of the boiler where it flowed over the dry, hot, firebox and flash boiled. I don't know about the general age of crews in that era but when I came to work as engineer at Sheridan in the mid-1970s I was 25 years old. During the coal boom it was not uncommon for the entire 4 man crew to have a TOTAL seniority of only 1.5 to 2 years. _._,_._,_
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