Eugene Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Over the years, I've heard many stories about a
> guy on the WP dubbed "The Mad Bomber". Never been
> able to discover his real name, but it seems he
> had a particular fascination with torpedoes.
> Several old WP heads told me that a favorite game
> of his was to wire a number of them together and
> toss the resulting ball out the caboose window
> when they went over a bridge, including highway
> bridges. Seems it made quite a bang when it
> struck something hard.
>
> A former Stockton carman told me about patching a
> hole in the floor of a caboose caused by a game of
> torpedo "medicine ball". A guy (perhaps the
> Bomber, stories vary) wired a mess of them
> together and the guys in the caboose started
> tossing this hot potato around. Well, someone
> bobbled a catch and the thing exploded inside the
> car. Burned a hole in the floor and seriously
> injured everyone involved.
>
> E


Nonsense. That sounds like a railroad version of an "urban legend". You can not explode a torpedo by tossing it around in a caboose. They take quite an impact to explode. I've seen a torpedo (or at least was fairly close to it) explode by impact with a hammer. It took several attempts to achieve and that was against a steel deck (of a caboose platform). I've also seen employees that would take two large tie plates, place torpedos between them, wire the contraption together and toss it off a tall bridge onto hard ground (or the steel bridgework below). Sometimes they'd go off.

Employees were advised not to carry torpedoes in a pocket (the reason for the flagging kit) but I've never heard of an employee having one explode in a pocket. It doesn't seem likely or possible considering that the soft tissue of the leg would just absorb the impact when bumping against a hard surface.