Looking at the track plan I will be very closely basing my layout from, they have a little curved building that is listed as s snow shed. What I’m wondering is, what the heck is a snow shed? I mean beyond the obvious that it had something to deal with trains and snow, what is it’s use?
To prevent snowfall from accumulating on the track – whether falling from the sky or drifting. Few railway showsheds in the U.S. were or are for avalanche protection other than slumps off sidehills or short slopes, as the forces of a large avalanche are very high and the cost of the snowshed too high for the value it might deliver. The strength requirement for a shed that will protect against a tall snowshed chute exceeds $10,000-$20,000 per foot of snowshed in current dollars.
The idea behind the snowshed is to prevent snowfall accumulation that is difficult to remove. A location with sustained high winds, or where there is no place to push snow to the side (because of vertical topography) is a good location for a snowshed, as well as a place with very high normal snowfall rates. A trench excavated by a snowplow into the snow will rapidly fill back in if there’s any wind. Thus the rail lines in the U.S. with snowsheds tended to be tunnel portals (which are usually in a deep cut or a one-sided deep cut, or exposed to sustained high winds in locations with high snowfalls, or locations with switch points or where locomotives must back up (such as wyes and sidings), or side-hill railways on mountain slopes with very high snowfalls. Most of the snowshed in the U.S. was accordingly built in locations such as Donner Pass and Stevens Pass (very high annual snowfalls) and Rollins Pass (very high winds above timberline.
RWM
A snow shed is generally used in the mountains where there is danger of an avalanche or drift over the tracks, The track typically runs along an embankment or cliff and the shed covers the tracks so that snow sliding down the mountain will go over the tracks instead of on it. Snow sheds were also used on wyes to cover the switches and keep snow out of them and to protect the track so when the locomotives were backing up they wouldn’t have to back through heavy snow and risk derailments.
One of the western roads (SP I think) even had a covered turntable, roundhouse and access tracks somewhere in the high country. SP probably was among the leaders in showshed mileage over Donner pass.
This is a pic of the long-abandoned Wellington WA concrete snow shed built by the Great Northern after an avalanche wiped out a passenger train killing IIRC 96 people - worst avalanche in US history.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3186/3114134659_97ca5b8949.jpg?v=0
On the Southern Pacific original grade there were a 67-foot turntable, engine house, and section of mainline, all covered with show sheds. Attached to the sheds were a hotel, tool house, telegraph ofice and freight house. Subsequently, a 5.36-mile realignment and tunnel lowered the summit elevation by 133 feet and shortened the line by 1.3 miles. New train facilities were located just west of old Summit, at Norden. There the now-double track mainline was covered by snow sheds as well as a 120-foot turntable and fire train spur. There were four leads to the turntable. The station and “ski hut” were located within the sheds. Cook house and railroad-employee houses were also connected to the snowshed complex by enclosed walkways.
Going all the way back to the original question, a snow shed is a roof over the tracks to keep snow from piling up on them. In relatively flat country, snow sheds resembled lo-o-ong single-stall engine houses, with roof slope in both directions. The more usual design was butted against the side of a hill and only sloped down to the valley side.
I have seen concrete slide sheds in Japan, in country where the problem was rock slides, not snow. They strongly resembled the concrete shed in the photo above.
Chuck
So then I don’t really need to have it? My layout will be placed in Lake Superior right around the area where Minnesota and Wisconsin meet. More or less imagining it’s there so I could have Soo line serve it and still possibly have MILW in the mix. But then again I may also make the island have it’s own shortline. Not having that dumb snow shed in the spot it’s in would let me put a curved bridge of some sort in it’s place so the main track could follow the grade and pass over a kind of long spur track that would lead onto a small leg for the power plant, which would free up the original area I was going to put the power plant in. Plus I wouldn’t have to kitbash the power plant to fit the original area as it would most likely have a few walls that would have to be moved to fit in the confines of the layout. Either that or a wye will go in place of the snow shed and go with the same idea just have the power plant leg at the same grade instead of below. I like both ideas and will have to draw up the basic plan of both these to show for some critizism. The plan I’m following, and now adding on to, is based in Canada, but the snow shed was only a small building probably enough to cover a 4 axle diesel and a 40 foot car and placed on a section of curved track. I just think on mine it would look a bit out of place. Like I said I need to draw up these idea’s tonight and post on here so everyone will get a much clearer idea of what I’m talking about.
Lots of snow sheds were later torn out, because snow removal technique improved (more machines, fewer men with shovels), and because snowfall in the late 1800s-early 1900s was often much greater than it is now.
Not a lot of snowshed was ever built in the Lake Superior region.
RWM
Snowsheds were built in mountainous areas where there was both a lot of snow and risk of avalanches. Most likely the plan you’re looking at was based on the Canadian Rockies??
For the area you’re modelling, it’s possible if a line had ever been built up the North Shore of Lake Superior from Duluth to Port Arthur / Ft. William (now Thunder Bay) Ontario it might have used snowsheds up near the border. But none around Duluth / Superior were ever built. The area’s pretty flat - except for Duluth being on the side of a steep hill of course. [:)]
The Milwaukee reached Duluth by (freight only) trackage rights over Northern Pacific’s “Skally Line”. When the NP bought the St.Paul and Duluth RR in 1900, they had to grant trackage rights to CM&St.P to get them to withdraw their objections. Interestingly enough, the deal is still in use, even though NP became BN became BNSF (and now use GN’s line instead of the NP’s line) and MILW became SOO became CP.
Soo served the Twin Ports too, freight and passenger service…and ore too!! Part of my new under-construction layout is based on the joint NP-SOO iron ore line running from Superior WI to the Cuyuna Iron Range in central Minnesota. They used the NP ore dock in Superior (Allouez) next to the GN’s docks.
I still don’t quite reconcile my notion of a snow shed with your description…little curved building. Did you mean that it is a structure with a sloped cover, or roof? Sorry, but I want to be sure.
Many very knowledgeable responses precede mine, but I’ll add that there are a great many snow/rock sheds in the Canadian Rockies and adjacent ranges. Some are in the Rogers Pass area, and not just over the CP tracks…they also provide protection from the same hazards for motorists on the Trans-Canada Highway.
The snow sheds essentially provide a handy path for sliding/falling/tumbling hard and voluminous stuff to keep clear the paths intended for conveyances. In places where there are obstructions close-by on either side of the right of way, say in a rock cut, clearing snow and rock slide debris would be an onerous undertaking. So the snow shed is making a tunnel where none exists so that the roof the structure provides a deflecting, conveying path. Otherwise, clearing it off the right of way would take days, possibly, and great expense…not to mention it posing a grave danger to travellers.
-Crandell
I went wading back through posts by MILW-RODR to see if I could solve the mystery.
He apparently is planning to copy from MR magazine a layout plan named “CP Slocan Lake” (Track plan database: http://www.trains.com/mrr/default.aspx?c=a&id=3069).
A quick google for Slocan Lake shows that there is a place in the Selkirk Range in the province of British Columbia in Canada by that name.
So the track plan he is copying is set in the Canadian Rockies - the “little curved building” is indeed a regular snow shed set along a curve in a corner of the layout, presumably scenically treated as track right next to a mountainside.
I have no idea why one would want to take a track plan based on the Canadian Rockies and transfer it to the US midwest, since the two areas have very little in common. The Canadian Rockies would be a fairly typical location for a snowshed, while the US Midwest would clearly not be a very typical location for a snowshed.
Smile,
Stein
Good work, Stein!!
It may for the same reason I have pseudo-western scenery and run mostly Pennsy, NYC, and N&W trains. I gotta have it all!
[:D]
-Crandell
SteinJr is the closest, that’s the track plan I was BASING mine off of. It would have been changed a bit to fit my requirements so it wasn’t like I was going to exactly perfectly copy that track plan. No one said anything about mid-west up untill a few posts ago. I’m trying to do a freelance local, I definetly do not live in a mid-west environment, although it can get just as hot in WI as it does in CA. Heck over the last few winters it’s gotten almost as cold as Alaska at times. I didn’t know Slocan lake was in the Canadian Rockies, the article didn’t mention it and I was only basing my track on it so I didn’t really do much research. If I had I wouldn’t have needed to post a question. But it’s all changed anyways. Seeing that CP division track plan made me realize I had to go with HO scale, and now I’m stuck on HO scale. Good thing I don’t have too much invested in N scale right now. But as I was getting too, things change. Finances aren’t the best so I can’t make a room sized plan, I have to plan for a shelf. Mostly because this place is too expensive to live and might move to a 1 bedroom apartment, but partially because if the gf and I continue to stay here we might have to rent out the spare room, which means no train room. Which would also mean 3 people trying to share a somewhat small living room which means no trains period unless it can be folded up and stored under the couch or something. Great, now I got idea’s popping into my head. That’s another reason I don’t have anything going yet. I get set on one thing (room sized N scale Milwaukee Road layout) then read something else and change my mind (the CP Slocan Lake division plan) and then read the MR issue in the mail (Barbara Brunette’s Whasup Dock Co. layout from 3/09) and decide on something else.
Would this be the “Mole Town” mentioned in National Geographic’s Love Those Trains back in 1984?
Kevin
I don’t know, but it is an appropriate description.
Just found this informative website which includes a lot of photos taken around Donner Summit.
http://www.cprr.org/Museum/Sierra_Grade_8-2003/Donner_Pass-Summit_Tunnel/index.html
Mark