Hi all i am new and planning for a garden railroad. hoping to start construction in 2 years. Since fall is approaching my mind is thinking about future winter operations in Zone 5 weather climate. Has anyone ever heated the railroad lines to prevent snow and ice buildup. Just a thought at this time. The runs would be long and I see issues with that. keeping the glycol warm enough for 100 200 or more feet. Has this scheme ever been used.
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What? And rob yourself of the joy of staying out in a 30" snowfall until 0300 keeping the line clear with double headed engines?
Critters munching on your glycol lines?
Plowed my pike for 25+ years. Mow I just let it melt.
Why not get yourself a snowblower?
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Snow Blowers are not delicate tools, and would likely tear up track and scenery. Most snow blowers would clear a path wider than the ROW on a typical garden railroad, and not fit around a lot of landscaping
I donāt know where he is in āZone 5ā, or what his snow conditions are like. If he is in an inland area, with typically drier lighter snow, a Leaf Blower may be a good option. If he is in an area that gets wetter, heavier snow like the āCascades Concreteā we get here on Mt Hood, a leaf blower wouldnāt be very effective
Doug
Well, there is this current listing on eBay
But seeing as his track isnāt laid yet, going with a heated roadbed would likely be much cheaper, but sure wouldnāt have the āCool Factorā of a working rotary
Doug
I was, indeed, referring to a rotary snowblower, not a regular oneāand it wouldnāt necessarily cost $5000! I picked up an O Scale one for just $50, although I have no idea how good it is with snow.
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USA Trains makes a rotary snow blower in G gauge, but it has scale thickness (thin) plastic blades that will only work with the lightest of powdery snow.
Sturdier blades could be scratchbuilt, either thicker ones (Iād do this in plastic with my 3D printer) or metal ones.
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The hub will have to be stronger than the blades, both at the blade attach points and in the splines or keyed drive from the shaft.
You may need a comparatively large motor to move heavy or wet snow and then āthrowā it. The required current may be sufficient to show heavy microarcing if it goes through the rails.
Likewise you will need good ballasting/weighting of the vehicle, and buffing arrangements if the rotary is to be pushed without derailment. I would suspect youād want flanger action, but perhaps with some arrangement as on the prototype to lift the flangers at switches, guardrails, or other potential impediments. I doubt even a ballasted model will cut ice in flangeways effectively ā which might make a scale equivalent of switch heaters, and the piped heat in the original topic for low or drainage points, more important.
Note that an effective practical rotary will be in ālarger scaleā than the real model stock, so it cuts greater clearance. Might be something to model in, say, On3 for O gauge track.
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Yesāand all of these are potential issues.
Iām not sure what you mean here. On3 is an O Scale model representing a narrow gauge prototype (3 foot gauge). How, then, could it be for O Gauge track? Actually, it would be good to know what scale the the original poster is using.
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What I meant is that, whatever scale heās using for his ārealā trains, you use a larger scale for the rotary or jet or whatever so it clears a wider swath. What I was actually thinking of was G scale, where the 1 gauge people use 1:32, the narrow-gauge (like LGB) use 1:20-and-a-fraction, and Aristo and others ācompromisedā on 1:29. The larger the scale you use with a given gauge, the better for snow-clearing purposes.
Yes, I got the On3 backward.
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Thatās what I thought, but I wanted to be sureā¦
If I had a nickel for every time that I did thatā¦
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I keep thinking that you could model one of the ājetā rail snowblowers using a scale turbojet engine. An adapted heat gun or hair dryer isnāt going to melt fast enough to do the job of a rotary or reel snow thrower. Perhaps the jet could be used for āmaintenanceā once the line has been cleared by other means.
To use heated roadbed, you might use the tubing from a radiant floor heat system. Youād need to insulate a trench under the track centerline, and carefully arrange drainage away from that centerline. Youāll also need to do some kind of continuous circulation with antifreeze, or drain the system like built-in lawn sprinklers, to prevent the system stopping up in very cold weather.
When I experimented with ācast-in-placeā top-down concrete construction, I tinkered with running a heated tube up the center. It needed a LOT of heat to do more than prevent frost or light snow accumulating.
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Well, a sufficiently powerful system would workā¦
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I know of a number of heated outside walkways and driveways, that to my knowledge use the same kind of tubing panels as radiant floors. You only need to run them at a temperature that precludes precipitation or meltwater freezing, which may not be many days of the heating season. But I have also heard complaints about the cost to run radiant floors ā which are generally inside a space-conditioned and dry envelope.
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I canāt say that we have many of them up in the freezing wilds of ND, at least not that Iāve seen. 
But, now that I think of it, some older houses around here do (sort of) have heated floors. Itās been common at various times to basically nail sheet steel to the bottom of the floor joists and use that as a duct. Itās cheap, itās easy, and it works wellāand, as a side benefit, that floor area becomes heated when the furnace is running!
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