Nostalgia & History > Boiler Explosion On An 1100 Series Pacific

In 2000 I was still working in the radio business when I came up with the idea of doing a radio documentary on the men who worked on the railroad during the steam era. I put out a little note on our station's "swap shop" sort of segment, which resulted in my visiting Mr. Robert Presley in Hurst, Illinois.

Robert Presley went to work on the Illinois Central in 1941 at age 15, working for his father who was the foreman on a track gang. He later went in the service at the tail end of World War II, and returned to the railroad when he left the military in 1946. His career eventually took him into the roundhouse at Carbondale, Illinois, and into the signal department during slack periods at the roundhouse. Mr. Presley was 84 years old when he passed away in 2011.

As we were wrapping up our first interview, he mentioned a boiler explosion on a St. Louis bound passenger train. We did one more interview a few days later, and I asked about the incident.

Mary McPherson
Dongola, IL
Diverging Clear Productions

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Amazing that a random fragment of broken glass could just happen to be shaped just right to seal a pipe like that.