What do you do when you get 800,000 lbs of train stuck in the snow?

[TrainNut]

It seems these guys are wondering that too...
Awesome video of some snow plowing... or would that be snow ramming?
A 2 minute video on YouTube...
YouTube - Train Snow Plow Getting Stuck

 

[Renovo PPR]

Did you notice all that power and no smoke out the stacks.:mrgreen:

 

[Nomad]

How did the snow get so high there when you see grass and dirt where the truck drives? I wonder if that was some kind of test.

Loren

 

[rogerw]

Snow drifts Loren

 

[Renovo PPR]

I can have up to 6 feet of snow in my drive way yet have grass the whole way between the house and barn. That wind can do strange things with snow.

 

[Russ Bellinis]

There was a little smoke out the stack as they started plowing. Generally a well tuned diesel will smoke a little off idle, but it clears up as a load is applied to the engine. I wonder if they had to call in a rotary to finish the job?

 

[TrainNut]

There was another video of the same train a little further on down the line. The plow had derailed and buried itself in the dirt as well as derailing the first loco. One of the comments below was that it was almost a year later and the plow was still buried right where they left it.

 

[roch]

I hope that never happens on the tracks I live next to. I would have to call 911 to get shoveled out of the house. sign1

Great link. :thumb:

 

[nkp174]

Interestingly, many mountain railroads didn't get their first rotaries until around 1890...and even then...rotaries only work if the snow isn't deeper than the rotary...so, they used a very high tech snow removal device...a shovel.

The Cumbras & Toltec have fired up both of their steam rotaries over the years...to clear the line in the spring. Snow fighting is always awesome (unless a bulldozer is used).

 

[roch]

I doubt if trains run up by Rocky Mountain National Park. If they do they better bring more than a shovel. :winter1: No clue where I am going with this. You would have to be stuck there in the middle of winter to understand.

 

[TrainNut]

Interestingly, many mountain railroads didn't get their first rotaries until around 1890...and even then...rotaries only work if the snow isn't deeper than the rotary...so, they used a very high tech snow removal device...a shovel.

I've seen pictures on the narrow gauge lines, where the snow was so deep, they tunneled through it. That seems like a disaster just waiting to happen.

 

[nkp174]

I've seen pictures on the narrow gauge lines, where the snow was so deep, they tunneled through it. That seems like a disaster just waiting to happen.

It's just part of the reason Alpine Tunnel was abandoned in 1910 :mrgreen:

 

[MasonJar]

Interestingly, many mountain railroads didn't get their first rotaries until around 1890...and even then...rotaries only work if the snow isn't deeper than the rotary...so, they used a very high tech snow removal device...a shovel.

Well, it's interesting, yes. But it's also that a workable prototype was not made until the early 1880s, so by the time they got to a point where production was possible, it would have been 1885+...

There are stories in a book I have (Steam Through Orangeville) about snow north of Orangeville, ON on the CPR where locos were stuck for days, and some of the (sometimes unfortunate) results of fighting snow. One of the more unbelievable is the number of men digging out buried (not just stuck) locos.

Ironically, while it was Orange Jull - an Orangeville resident - that invented the device that was turned into the prototype, the CPR never operated rotaries out of Orangeville. They were mainly reserved for the west/mountains.

Andrew