Putting cap gun caps in my exploding ammo dump?

I was thinking more of the few pounds of gunpowder.

KIDS, DON'T Do as I say, Do as I do and DONT try it. You can get badly hurt.

i used to use a trail of plastic model glue from one model to the next when i blew up more than one thing at a time and lots of 'snakes' and 'lady fingers' inside for the actual demolition.  very flammable.  of course, i haven't tried it in 40 years.  the glue these days is probably diluted and wussified.  they might still sell the good stuff in mexico  

What state are you in? I doubt that you can get cap gun caps in any liberal state.

This is probably your best bet but,PLEASE for the love of god make sure you buy SMOKELESS gunpowder anything else will just blow up in your face when you try and light it.

Safety first.

For the sound effects...   If you do a google search for military/explosions and sound effects you should come up with a bunch.  I would download them to a cheap mp3 player and trigger that from a switch, button or better yet your remote.  You can get very specific too.  Should I use that .50 cal or the .60 cal???  Hmm...   Anyway, the selection of digital sound effects for explosions and military bases is huge.  The only question is what the best way is to implement them for your situation.

When I was a kid I "played with fire" but even then I knew better than to do it on the layout or indoors.  I would strongly recommend against the burning glue or gunpowder or other flammables.  Even some smoke bombs can start a fire.  Fires can easily get out of hand.  You don't want to have to use that fire extinguisher you have under the layout.  You *DO* have one under the layout, don't you???  

All that being said, you could rig something up to detonate caps from a cap gun (or those mercury fulminate poppers) but I don't think they sound much like an exploding pile of ammo.

Smokeless will flash pretty good too.  It won't create the cloud that black powder will but there is still smoke.  It is way to easy to get hurt playing with this stuff and doing it inside is a recipe for disaster.

I like Gandald97's suggestion of a sound file.

I was at a show where the club had a quarry being blasted. They had the blast sound and a piece of the foam quarry blew out with some compressed air. It was effective.

Hey Mike a couple of these puppies should do the trick.

Thanks for the ideas guys. The problem still comes with how do I trigger anything when the ammo dump "explodes". That's why I was thinking of triggering the caps with the spring arm. And yes, we can still get cap gun caps, but I could only find the roll type at my local K-Mart. Our K-Mart still has a toy aisle filled with guns (cap, squirt, nerf, etc)

As for some of the real fire on the layout, fire extinguisher or not, I am not trying that, just for safety sake.

I've done that! I modified a exploding boxcar mechanism so when the spring loaded arm strikes the frame it sets a single gun cap off. It was fun and 'realistic' as you heard the 'boom', saw the flash of light and smelt the gunpowder when your missile launcher hit the mark! I had to cut each single cap from a roll of 50 with a pair of sissors, and every once in a while one would explode while cutting it off the roll!

 Speaking of rolls of caps, don't tape a package of 10 boxes to the real railroad tracks! The engineer thinks he ran over a track torpdo! Learned that about 40 years ago!

I hope some of the comments I see here about gunpowder and smokeless propellant powder are said in jest, but just in case, here is some information. "Gunpowder" is old-fashioned black powder. It is an EXPLOSIVE. It is a bit tricky to handle and can ignite with a random spark. It's what firecrackers are made out of. If any quantity of it is confined in a container and ignited, it will explode, and can cause a destructive fire. 

Smokeless propellant powder, used in all modern ammunition, is not considered an explosive, but it is highly flammable. Most of it is made out of nitroglycerin (yes, nitro) with a retardant coating to keep it from exploding. Propellant doesn't explode, it just burns very, very fast and produces a large cloud of superheated gas, the rapid expansion of which propels the bullet out of the barrel. 

Neither black powder nor smokeless propellant has any business on a train layout. Way too risky. Stick to caps - they are pretty safe and make a nice loud bang. 

There is a liquid that is very easy to make, that you can drop one tiny drop from an eyedropper and when it dries, it is very shock-sensitive and will go off with a loud bang if disturbed. College chemistry students use it for practical jokes. And if you think I'm going to tell you what it is, or how to make it, you're crazy. 

All I'm going to say is Estes model rocket engines and their electronic igniters.

Used 'em waaaay back in the 70's for lots more than launching my rockets.  I.e. lots of uses on the old big layout in the basement.   You ever see a Plasticville type shack shoot across a train layout?

Also did a lot of "Wylie Coyote Acme rocket" experiments, powering boxcars around the tracks.   I would cut a hole in one end of a box car.  Then I'd attach an engine tube from my model rocket parts.  Insert engine, usually a "D".   Insert the igniter, attach the alligator clips, then push the Estes launch control button.   First time too much engine, too little weight.  Let's just say the box car kept going straight.   Finally found the right amount of weight to keep the car on the tracks.

Man those were the days!

Hmmmm...

I feel a need to hit the hobby shop for some rocket parts

I think I figured out what I will do! Rather than modifying the striker, I am going to modify the base, raising it just enough to make the striker hit flat on an area where I can put a strip of about 5 caps to fire. I use roll caps to, so I will have to cut them out in groups of 5.

As for rocket motors, I never thought of them as a power source for a boxcar (and that might not work well with my paper mache mountain lol), but I had to get rid of one a while back, and since we burn our garbage, I decided to burn it! Well, I got smart and wired it down (with about 10ft of slack for fun ), and then stuck the top down into the ash of the outdoor fireplace. It was an amazing site, like a big firework. Unfortunately I forgot that it had a smaller fuel source at the top to fire the parachute out of the rocket. When the bottom started, I got closer, and thankfully it was wired in place when the top went off, or it would have hit me!

Morale of the story: all this stuff is dangerous, and if you are going to do it, be very, very careful. This thread has made me really thing about how dangerous stuff can be, and has convinced me to get a small fire extinguisher for my layout.

Even more concerning when the timing is coming into the fireworks season. I live in a area where all bets are off with fireworks for sale from little strings all the way to artillery rounds. Essentially small mortars. Celebratory weapons fire is also a factor.

Yes there is usually a Commercial ABC extinguisher in the train area as in every room. I fought many a fire in my time on the road and never those with Explosives involved.

There are old trade publications in the library that details a range of ... mixes and you aint gonna see any of that or anything else from me here or anywhere.

I played with fireworks one year as a bucket list, about 50 dollars worth. Took me an hour to go through them all using a pair of plywood sheets. One was a spinner time and got lodged and actually started a small fire. A 5 gallon bucket of water took care of that straight away.

Rocketry is not what it used to be, you could still get some in our area to fly.

As a final note to how serious we consider explosives is a Ammunition Plant down the road. Whenever we see the red light anywhere on the property, that means no movement of any kind. (Static electricity among other considerations by human or vehicle.)

Sorta relevant: I wanted more gunpowder as a kid, so I looked up (in the encyclopedia)

how to make it, bought the ingredients at the drugstore (the charcoal/carbon I got from

BBQ charcoal), mixed it up with a mortar and pestle, packed it in some empty

gelatin capsules (also from the drugstore), and, voila! Ka-pow. Good fun; no injuries.

Why would there be? I had a brain. I was eleven or so.

See - the Internet is no big deal.

Then why mention it?  

Good safety advice above the quoted text though.

Mike here's a product that's safe to use indoors and produces a very loud bang.  It's calcium carbide that you mix with wate and ignite it with a spark.

Bangsite® 3-Pack + Spark Plug 3-Pack

[Order both items here...$22 + $2 = $24]

Ammo for ALL our Models! (300 shots)

Water, some fresh air, Bangsite® and a spark creates a loud BANG and realistic flash of light!

Lots of safe shots: 1 tube = 100 shots
[BGS = SP]
Bangsite® tube...$9.50ea
Spark Plug...$0.75ea

Bangsite® is pulverized calcium carbide
Spark Plug is a specially made flint (ignition)

$24.00

When I was growing up, a kid in my town figured out how to make nitroglycerine in

this little garden shed his parents let him play with his chemistry set in (dunno if it was a Gilbert's). (they obviously were too astute to let him fiddle with it in the house).

That was brought to a halt and he was put on a tighter leash when he blew himself

through and out the door (without much injury other than getting singed).  Homemade

nitro is notoriously unstable, due to impurities. 

Oh, yes, they did empty out the high school one day, but it was in a different chemistry class than mine, that a kid made it in the laboratory.  They emptied the building, the cops showed up, somebody tippy toed it out into the middle of the

football field, and they set it off.  I think it just burned.

I later worked with a military officer of some rank who mentioned that in his teens he and others used to make it, take it out in the California desert, and blow boulders way up in  the air. (two of these people said it was, then, easy to make, but falls under my admonition of "Don't try this at home!"  (Nowadays you'd probably get Big

Brother on your case big time!)

I have been building models forever....I used to build these stick and paper rubber

band powered airplanes, climb up on the roof of the garage, put a firecracker in one,

strike a match to the paper close by the cracker, and let it fly.....until it blew up and

went down in flames.  Pretty tame compared to blowing boulders up in the air. Never did anything radical to my trains though, they survived my youth in good shape, until the water heater broke in my mother's basement.

I just went to the website for that bangsite stuff.

HOLY POOP! That POOP IS AWESOME!

I've gotta get some and bring it to work. What FUN!

BTW: CaCO + H2O -> C2H2

When I was growing up, a kid in my town figured out how to make nitroglycerine in this little garden shed his parents let him play with his chemistry set

While the ingredients for nitroglycerine are easily obtained and it is easy to make, the ingredients are NOT found in a kid's chemistry set. If the kid was actually making nitro, he probably had a friend with an older brother who swiped the chemicals from a high school chem lab. Nitro is VERY unstable with or without impurities, nothing to mess with. 

That Bangsite stuff is outrageously fun.   There are all kinds of non-harmful ways to prank someone with that stuff.

Also, imagine putting some on a rail bumper and running your train into it with people watching, unsuspecting!

I haven't had chemistry in a while but I seem to recall that your equation is not balanced.  You do not account for there being 2 carbons and you don't indicate what happens to the calcium and the oxygen.  Hint:  I think this is also an "exothermic" reaction.  (I might well be wrong about that though).

In fact, the whole reason for the invention of dynamite was to have a more stable way to use nitroglycerine.  Trinitrotouluene is even more stable...

The late John Armstrong had decalled an All-Nation box car for the National of Mexico (N de M) and had it marked on both sides "Peligro - Dinamata" (danger - dynamite).  The car was rigged with springs so that a hard coupling would make the roof fly off and the sides and ends fly away.  If I recall correctly, he had a device that would explode a cap at the same time.

John's knowledge of railroading, both prototype and model, was easily equalled by his sense of humor.

I still miss him.

EdKing

I suspected his parents had him out in that shed because he had progressed somewhat beyond a kid's chemistry set.  What he claimed and what he was

actually doing....??  I just thought it odd and kind of deja' vu that I kept meeting these people who claimed to have played with the stuff.  Kids, like me, who watched

Westerns, learned at an early age that the stuff is unstable. when the train robbers

blew themselves up with it, or whatever....  I remember a film in which a buckboard

was racing the train, trying to catch it, and they had a barrel, marked, Nitroglycerine,

that the camera zoomed in on, when POOF, big cloud of smoke, and the train speeds

safely on...  I can't imagine that much of it, anybody crazy enough to haul it anywhere

on a buckboard, but...all artistic license...

I always wondered if the guys blowing up boulders used much, and if they mixed it

in the field...I'd be adverse to transporting it...shoulda asked....

Nitro used to be transported in barrels or crates of excelsior, to cushion it from shock. Dynamite was invented to stabilize nitroglycerin, but under certain conditions of temperature, humidity, and pressure, dynamite can sweat... you don't want to be there when dynamite starts to sweat. TNT, on the other hand, is utterly inert. You can play baseball with it - unless you set off a blasting cap or other explosion next to it, the stuff is completely harmless. It is flammable, but so are a lot of things. 

You are correct, its not a balanced equation. I was just trying to demonstrate that the reaction of Bangsite (CaCO) with water produces acetylene, a highly flammable gas.

I think it is exothermic, but all that heat is absorbed by the evolved gas, acetylene.

Back in the old days, miners would take a small chunk of CalciumCarbide and set it in a small dish on their helmet. They would then add a few drops of water and ingnite the gas (acetylene). This worked like a flashlight attached to their helmet.

Where's Gomez Addams when you need him....YOY???? !

Just get yourself a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook.   Everything ya need to know.

The full equation is CaC2 + 2H2O → C2H2 + Ca(OH)2.

Besides acetylene, you also make  Calcium hydroxide, which is quite basic. It will attack metal, which is why you see the insides of some many Big Bang cannons heavily corroded. People fail to give them a good rinsing with clean water when they are done using them.

Note that BB cannons are self limiting as to the size of the bang. Too much air, or too much actylene, and things work poorly, if at all. This is one of the reasons that they are touted as "safe". There is a flame, but no pressure build up. There is one I am aware of that is actually made of glass. And yes, it has been successfully fired many times.

My point to all this is that using BangSite outside of its' intended purpose is asking for trouble, especailly if you do not know what you are doing. I highly recommend sticking with the caps or finding something safer.

Chris

LVHR

Here’s what we did when I was a kid. We used the very tiny firecrackers called “Lady Fingers”. We would then wrap some very fine bare wire around the wick. A single strand of ordinary lamp cord worked fine. Connect each end of the wire to your transformer constant 18V output through a push button. When you push the button the wire creates a dead short and will glow red hot and light the wick. Do not try this with today’s transformers due to their delicate electronics and hair trigger circuit breakers. You would need to use and old style transformer that has a slow acting circuit breaker. It worked every time, which is why I no longer own any Plasticville buildings.

I remember as a kid, When we used caps in our cap gun, we would double them up for a bigger bang.