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Old 25th Dec 2013, 19:22
  #262 (permalink)  
Rail Engineer
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Midlands
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"Avtur is not Avgas / petrol. It is really quite hard work to ignite, does not explode when in liquid form."

Just to support that.


When I was on Operations in BR I worked in an area where we had various oil refineries and terminals and a very heavy traffic of aviation fuel trains.


The wagons were owned/leased by the Oil companies and sometimes maintenance was not as we would have wished, so from time to we would have 100 tonne tank wagons with burning axle-boxes or binding brakes creating flames around the bogie.


Experience dictated that the loaded wagons were not the ones to worry about, that was left for the unloaded ones whose tanks were filled with vapour and fumes !


It is actually very hard to set fire to aviation fuel, unless and until the fuel is mixed with a high air content...if that makes sense. Then the situation reverses, hence why I hated going to incidents of empty tank trains "on fire".
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