I am unable to identify the prototype railroad and description of the attached brass beauty. It’s the front end that’s so unique. The stamp on the bottom indicates it was manufactured by Ajin in January (?) of 1994. I know that Overland marketed scads of Ajin items but I’m not sure that Ajin built only for them. In any case, I’d like to know not only who ran the prototype and how they designated it, but the importer of the model and their catalog number.
Let’s see if I can manage a couple photos . . .
Hmm, that didn’t work so well. But it should open if you click on the little symbols above. Lemme see if I can fix this, it’s thru Imgur.
(Arrggh! I don’t do this often enough to get the process down [:^)])
Made by the William Bros (that is not an abbreviation of ‘brothers’) company of Minneapolis. Typical of the era, which gave us gems like Boxpok to phonetically pronounce, it’s a Sno-Flyr; its melting rather than long-throwing counterpart (which competed with Barber-Greene) was the Sno-Meltr.
Here is the NP version of the device, circa 1949 – note the different truck arrangement and type:
If you look at a couple of the components in its business end you will get some appreciation for the problems the machine faced in service… and perhaps why there were so few of them.
For some information about how it works, and some disambiguation about the ‘Army’ origin of the machine, see January 1946 Popular Mechanics. Note the purpose of the raisable flails on the frame.
This was the one HB1200S Conrail bought in 1986 (their RSB1000; they also had a HB900S that was painted red) – CSX got it along with the Buffalo Line in the split.
Built by Martin Beilhack GmbH in Rosenheim (now, I believe, made by Aebi Schmidt). It pivots on the B-B undercarriage to run in either direction. Apparently the actual ‘blowing’ heads are single-stage and the propeller-like things break up the snow in advance. Here is what they look like running, with explanation:
Note the single chute and spout attachment rather than the two directable spouts on the Conrail unit; that is a factory option. Note that the reason for the two spouts is that the heads can be extended outboard to cut wider with multiple passes.
They made a HB1600S with 3 turbocharged V12s that can apparently clear over 22000tons/hr (and those are metric tons) in one pass.
Beilhack records apparently show 4 sold in the United States; I am still looking for the other two.
Hey folks, sorry for reviving this discussion again but I’ve got some very interesting stuff to add.
I have become very, very fascinated with the Bros as of late. In all the research I did to scratch my itch, I could never find any pictures of the inside… so I got some of my own!
I feel a bit dirty plugging my flickr to people who don’t ask for it, but I’ve got a lot more pictures there, and flooding the thread with single-photo messages is desirable to literally no-one.
So, here ya go!
For what it’s worth I don’t think that you are “…plugging my flickr to people who don’t ask for it.” You are sharing your great collection of photos of a piece of railroad machinery that some of us find interesting, and will never get to actually see.
So, thank you very much!
