Monday, November 21, 2011

Nitroglycerin bottles

From: "Montgomery Pollack" Monty@hpr.com

I own a motion picture prop house in Los Angeles, CA. and we are working on a film right now that takes place in 1872 and there is a scene where some nitroglycerin bottles are being delivered and unpacked. It is our job to supply the period correct bottles for this scene. Do you have any pictures of what a nitroglycerin bottle looked like or if it even came in a bottle when they were using it to build the railroads. ...

—Montgomery Pollack, Vice President, The Hand Prop Room LP

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Have not seen any 19th century railroad photographs showing period nitroglycerin bottles.

It seems that after the explosion in San Francisco, nitroglycerin was deemed too dangerous to transport and was used by the CPRR for tunnel blasting by manufacturing it on site. Also by 1872 due to the Alfred Nobel patents, not sure if liquid nitroglycerin was still in use anywhere or if stable dynamite had completely replaced the liquid. The CPRR construction was completed in 1869 and it seems that after the tunnel blasting in the Sierra Nevada mountains was finished they went back to using black powder.

The only online image we were able to find is this one, but we have no idea what era this is from or even if it is a real nitroglycerin bottle or just a novelty item.

11/21/2011 1:30 PM  
Blogger CPRR Discussion Group said...

See related discussion.

2/29/2012 7:04 AM  

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