Google armoured trains.
Soviet: http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m199/Von_poop/album 2/sovtrain.jpg
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I guess steam locks would have been very vulnerable to strafing as the boiler is a large target and once it's holed, that's it. On the other hand, if that was the total of the damage wouldn't,t it be pretty easy to repair?
Had the Germans been using Diesel engines the trains might have been tougher to kill. Non volatile fuel and the engine could have been armoured, which I imagine would have been impractical with a stem loco. At the end of the day though, a train is always going to be a comparatively large, slow moving target.
My father led, and was shot down during one such sweep ne of Paris on August 18, 1944 but was rescued by his number 3 - Royce Priest.
I wonder, General Motors F1 "covered wagon" diesels were coming online during the war. Did the Germans have anything comparable?
... In fact, gasoline rationing was put in place in the U.S. not because of inadequate supplies of oil/gasoline, but because of a shortage of rubber/tires.
When you say your father was shot down and then rescued, does that mean his #3 landed and picked your father up?
What were the most effective train busting weapons, rockets, 20mm, .50, bombs?
Yes Wusak - I posted pics here of the first Piggy Back Rescue...
My father was leading the group at head of 354FS, got hit after telling squadron to stay up while checked out the flak - he was hit by a burst of 20mm over the M/Y, on fire and Split S to get on ground (he never bailed out in either WWII or Korea). Priest landed about 800 yards in a wheat field French farmers were still cutting, taxied back to a point where he could take off into the wind as my father, out of shape, was huffing from his ship to Priest's. He ordered Priest to "go Home" - Priest refused and threw his chute on the ground. Dad hopped in and the rest is history - except that Priest was sure he would be court matrialed for disobeying a direct order in combat.
Instead Doolittle awarded him the DSC and told him (and rest of 8th FC) "don't do This again"
Here is one of them. My father sat in seat and controlled rudder and landing gear, Priest (6'-2") sat on his lap after tossing his parachute - and controlled stick and throttle.
The shooting up of the engines is what was effective, especially if it ruptures the steam tubes. It's a repairable but time consuming repair job. An engine in the shop is an engine not pulling freight around.
Wuzak, those are just cherry picked examples of an infrequent event. Most of the time, the boilers didnt explode like that.
How did they react?
How do you know it was infrequent? How often is infrequent?
If they did, there would have been a lot more of the gun camera footage that would have been preserved.
As it was, it was usually just some holes made in the engine with steam escaping. Nothing dramatic.
Those engines were made of some tough iron and steel.