Has anyone designed or built a new snowplow in the last few years? all the photos we see are equipment from the 1920’s, I did see some home made plows( blades on a gondola) but is there no need for snow removal anymore?? Don’t tell me it’s global warming, I’m just waiting for January when it’s 40 below, then I’ll contact you about Global Warming ! !
Jordan spreaders (Dual purpose, HD Machines…Jackson/ Jordan, now part of Harsco)
Alaska RR got some of the last: http://www.alaskarails.org/fp/Jordan-spreader.html
plus there are gaggles of smaller machines out on the market: http://www.kershawusa.com/row.php
Railroads prefer year round utility & use of equipment if they can get it…and the old stuff is bulletproof (if it works, don’t mess with it…those machines have evolved to where they are by many years of trial/error/modify/learn…)
I think railroad snowplows last forever - with the exception maybe being rotaries. The wedge plow stationed in Blackfoot Idaho is mounted on an old gondola. It was old when I was in high school in the early 1960’s and is still very workable.
dd
Rotary OY, on the Cumbres and Toltec, was delivered in 1923; that was a good part of “forever” ago.
Add to that the existence of plows on many locomotives now, and relatively frequent trains. Unless it snows really hard, or drifts build up, day-to-day operations aren’t terribly hindered by ‘normal’ snowfall. If things get built up over time, the Jordan goes out.
AFAIK the UP built some newer rotaries in the 80’s. THe SP rebuilt many of their older rotaries with snail power. You may find the old steam equipment replaced by electric motors.
I recent times, the RR’s may be using more construction equipment to be “portable”. A dozer & a wheel loader can handle a lot of snow. THere may be smaller types of snow blower equipment mounted on trucks.
Has heavy snowfall ever been known to derail a train or is it more a matter of stopping a train in (on) it’s tracks?
BNSF still uses ex-Great Northern Railway snowdozers-many of them built in the early 1930s. Last year at our GNRHS convention in Kalispell, Montana, BNSF gathered a pair of them plus an ex-GN Jordan spreader at Essex for us to tour through. The two dozers were built in 1936-and still very much in service. A third was at the Whitefish roundhouse, built in 1935.
I had an opportunity to tour one of UP’s “new” rotaries. IIRC it was constructed on an old “F” chassis using rotary blades from a scrapped steam rotary. The EMD diesel powered the traction motor that turned the rotary. The battleship windshields were a most impressive feature. The operator said that conventional windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. He also said that from the tip of the chute to the ground at the end of the snow blower arc - the rotary could keep 20 tons of snow in the air.
dd
Snow has derailed trains probably thousands of times. Here are three old wrecks from the Railroad Gazette:
February 1888
10th, on Northern Pacific, near Grey Cliff, Mont., passenger train derailed in a snow drift, the entire train running free from the track upon the prairie, leaving the road unobstructed. The locomotive was upset and the tender piled on top of it. Engineer and fireman killed.
April 1888
15th, on New York & Northern, near Yorktown, N.Y., while 2 engines were pushing a snowplow through a deep drift the foremost one was derailed and its cab completely filled with snow, burying the engineer. The derailed engine broke loose from the other, ran some distance over the ties, and finally went over the embankment. Engineer and one other employee killed.
April 1888
16th, on New York Central & Hudson River, near Sharon, N.Y., a snowplow train, consisting of plow, 5 engines and 2 cabooses, charged at considerable speed a very deep snowdrift in a cut. The snow was very heavy and the engines were derailed, crushing into each other. Four trainmen were killed and 4 injured.
In addition, railroads now use contractors (like the ones to clean up wrecks) to remove snow. Around here they clean the yard with large bucket loaders and go through town cleaning grade crossings where the city plows pile snow across the tracks.
Since wedge snowplows have almost no moving parts and spend a large amount of time sitting on a spur, they tend to last a very long time. Why spend the money to replace them if they still do the job?
Around here the locos plows do a fantastic job of giving the city back the snow! Fun to watch, especially if they are at speed and you aren’t the first car in line at the intersection.
It’s all too common, especially in heavy snowfall areas or on the plains where the wind packs drifts over the tracks into hardened shells - I vividly recall seeing a pair of SD40-2s pushing a wedge plow that would have been on their sides in the snow if the drifts weren’t so deep! Canadian snow is tough, and will even derail plows without hesitation!
SP (Now UP) does not use them often, but when the “Storm King” comes to the Sierra’s and you get 10 plus feet of snow in one storm they call them out. Based in Rosevile California and Sparks Nevada they keep the road clear
In 1951 I beleive, when the City of San Francisco got snow bound, the plows sent to rescue them got stuck as well. Avalaches caught them. It took a week to clean up the mess…
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There is at least one company in Germany that still makes large self propelled rotary plows. Conrail had one of these machines (I think NS may have gotten it in the merger). I have also seen pictures of a “plow locomotive” owned by one of the scandinavian railroads (Swedish, IIRC) which looked like a combination of a Jordan Spreader and a GP39-2 (which it is apparently mechanically similiar to with an EMD 12-645 turbo engine). Supposedly these units power work trains during the warmer months and fight snow all winter.
I suspect that as the consolidations and reduction in trackage occur the number of plows and spreaders needed is dropping also. When I first moved to the chicago area Jordan Spreader had a plant in East Chicago indiana. IT has been gone for over twenty years now.
Bashing through the snow banks left by the street plows and watching the faces of the people in the cars sitting right at the gates of crossings as they see the wall of snow about to bury their car, is one of the job perks of winter railroading.
Digging out and unclogging the knuckle and the air hoses on the front of the unit is NOT one of the perks.
The rotary stationed in Cheyenne is an old steam rotary that was retrofitted with a diesel engine. The wedge plow statoned in Green River is an old Vandy Tender, modified on one end with the wedge, and filled with concrete. There is no reason to design any new snow plows, becasue why fix what isnt broken?