I’m curious. I’ve seen some box cars with what looks like saw horses mounted on their roofs. They say they are for ice breaking. I presume they are used for tunnels. My question is how do they run them. Do they put them in FRONT of a locomotive? Do the railroads have special work trains to do this or do they put them somewhere in the consist of a freight ? I’ve never seen actually operating.
Happy New Year to all!
Thats interesting I’ve never seen one of them before.
They are normally put behind a locomotive, the idea is to remove ice in tunnels so it won’t damage the domes on passenger cars. Some passenger engines on the CP used to have ice breakers, and there have also been gondolas fitted with them too.
Bob Boudreau
Southern Pacific had ice breakers mounted on locomotives to break ice on its Donner Pass line. These ice breakers were called antlers by railfans.
Here on CP through the mountains, they usually put them on the end of low priority trains. They are rebuilds filled with gravel or cement that knock down dangerous icicles from the tunnels here so autoracks and doublestacks can pass through.
In the 1950s - 70s, F-units had large hoop like things on the top to break of icicles so that the dome cars could pass through. In the days before that, section gangs would go through the tunnels and take it out by hand, a dangerous job.
In the Spiral tunnels to prevent icicle buildup they had large wooden doors on the ends that they would close in the winter.
Hope I gave you more info than you needed!
Thanks . I knew someone out there would have an answer.
these guy are too much
all you have to do is ask
thanks happy new year
I also beleive SP put th ice breakers on a gondola and pushed it thru tunnels to vlear isc… I seemto remember a picture of one. Anyone else remember these???
I also remember seeing photos of one the Pennsy built out of an old quad hopper. It looked like one of the local shops just cut up some I-beams and channel iron and welded them up on the inside of the hopper.
Here’s a photo of one offered by Bowser Mfg.
…for the railroad??? I thought this thread was a question about HO scale ice breakers for the OCEAN!!!
Boy, what a diorama that would be…rescuing an icebound rail ferry with freight cars of perishable goods…Coast Guard to the rescue!!! Has anyone seen an HO scale ice breaker ship?
The late great Milwaukee had some SD-40s with collapsible ice breakers. Somebody with more imagination than sense assumed that they were pantographs and meant that electrics were coming back. The idea was to lift them and lock them in place if a train had any auto racks.