So I found an article today talking about the winter of 48-49, where massive blizzards struck the western states. Reading it, there is a description of Union Pacific using flamethrowers to clear the rails in Wyoming. That’s right, flamethrower squads roming the wilds of souther Wyoming on the old transcon; bringing firey death to snow! [:|] http://www.standard.net/Local/2014/01/02/Recalling-the-infamous-Utah-winter-of-1948-49
Soooo… with that in my mind (and to celebrate the coming spring time weather); what are the most outragous and cool snow battling equipment on your model railroads? Terminals for a large rotary fleet? An army of Jordan Spreaders? Or does anyone perhaps have a squad of veteran flamethrowers raining death on the snow?
At the steel plant where I worked, they usually used wheeled or tracked vehicles for major snow removal, but they also had a jet-powered snow melter for keeping turnouts functioning. Between the noise and the flying debris, you wouldn’t want to get too close.
On my layout, I have a pretty-much stock Walthers plow…
…and a somewhat modified Jordan spreader, also from Walthers…
I’ll eventually add a rotary plow, too, but that’s probably a scratchbuilding project.
I don’t have room for anything snow related sitting around, except the typical plow on the locos, and even a plow on the rear for the loco I use for switching.
It’s always June on my layout, green leaves, birds singing, green grass, summer breezes, rail crews in shirt sleeves, windows open, and beer on ice. [swg] along with all of the other very pleasent sights one sees on the streets of summer time. [:P]
I don’t know much about the winter of 48/49 but if it was the winter of 49/50 I was on the UP City of Los Angeles December 21 1949 with my Mother and brother and we were stopped by deep snow on Donner Pass. The SP sent a snow blower from the Roseville Yard to open the track. The train didn’t move for over 19 hours.
Don’t remember much but I do remember seeing the snow blower doing it’s thing. We couldn’t see out the windows of our room because of the snow. My brother and I managed to get up to one of the vista domes to see the blower coming early the next morning.
Great memory for a 12 year old boy. My brother didn’t remember any of it, he was 3 years old.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
[#oops] I should have put my spectacles on!!! Beer not Bear.[:$][swg]
While actual plans would be good, I’ve enough different photos from different angles, (More would always be better) to have started drawing HO scale plans of what will hopefully be a reasonable facsimile. on Flickr
The big problem is where it will end up on my list of things to do!!
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]
Ah, the Barber-Greene Sno-Loader. I don’t have one, but did build a locomotive for a friend which included the steam delivery pipe used with those machines. It ran from the steam dome to the front of the smokebox…
…from there, the connection would be a hose or perhaps a pipe with a swivel connector.
Can’t really beat a jet engine for darn near anything - melting snow, propelling a locomotive, or, mounted to a tank chassis, blowing out oil well fires (yes, there is such a thing!).
Well I am pretty familiar with rotaries, spreaders, plows, and even the jet blowers which blow snow off the tracks. I wasn’t that familiar with flamethrowers as snow removal tools. [:D]
Yea, they’re something, hey! Through all the years I’ve been a railroad fan, I’ve leaned that no matter what you can come up, there’s a prototype out there, somewhere. [(-D]
Go back and check out Dr. Wayne’s spreader, he’s an amazing modeler. I read where he even used parts from disposable lighters to make the tiny hydraulic ram parts.
We can get some exteme winter conditions here in WI., but I never have been up close to the massive blowers, and equipment that is used daily, in some the western mountain areas.
I’ve never heard of anyone using a flame thrower but I have seen people using a cutting torch to melt the ice on couplers. I have also seen them using a shotgun to shoot down icicles inside of tunnels.
I’ve seen rotary plows at work on Donner Pass. They are pretty loud and they throw snow down the side of the mountain which makes a pretty nice run for inner tubes or saucer sleds. When we were kids we were always happy when they would come by.
It’s always winter in the mountains on my layout so I have rotary plows, Jordan Spreaders and a flanger. Two of my spreaders are Walthers kits which are the compressed air type. I am scratch building a modern hydraulic spreader.
I’m still working on customizing the rotary plows. They will have Southern Pacific style blades which can be opened up to cut a wider path through the snow. They will also have marine windows installed to keep the snow from blocking the view of the operator. And the boiler in the rear will be removed to match the prototype and a door from an old F7 B unit will be added.
Wow, those Canadians really went to war on snow with that one. They even hauled the resulting water away. Amazing.
The Mears lines north out of Silverton i model were like the Silverton Branch itself – too many rocks embedded in the slides and drifts to run anything but wedge plows and snow shovels. But it’s always interesting to see how others do things. All we have is a flanger – and snow shovels.
There was a really weird rotary, of a sort, that ran in testing on the Alpine Pass line of the DSP&P/C&S up near Gunnison - the Jull. Never seen it modeled that I recall. It had a blade assembly that resembled a giant screw that angled down towards one rail at its front end, but rather like conventional rotaries from there back. A few were produced, but it turned out to be a design dead-end.
That I think is yet a different one. I recall seeing a pic of the one Mike mentioned, the spiral cone sat at an angle to the track, not head on like that Cyclone thing.
You can be fairly sure that if it could move deep snow, the railroads probably at least tried it.
Barber-Greene is someone I hadn’t heard of. Looks like they made lots of other machinery, but mostly non-RR. Still could make for some interesting loads with much of it.
Don’t recall that one, either, but I’ll bet the Jull and Caldwell folks spent lots of money on patent attorneys. I vaguely recall reading about such a conflict involving the Jull. Makes more sense now that I’ve seen the Caldwell.
on Flickr
