Join the discussion on the following article:
Ontario short line triumphs over ice storm
Silly Canadians. If you want to reach the higher stuff, do like interurbans did back in the day. Take an old boxcar and put a work platform on top. The deluxe version pivots from side to side in order to cover multiple tracks. To keep the boxcar from flipping with the platform swung out, fill it with rocks, scrap iron, old rails, or concrete.
If you want to go all out, get one of those tree eater tractors that the highway maintenance departments use south of the Ohio River. It is a standard crawler backhoe, heavily modified to mount and operate a giant weed eater type of a wood chipper which can be swung out and lifted as high as needed or lowered down into ravines. I watched one of those things reduce an entire tree right down to the stump in a matter of minutes, leaving just the stump and the piles of wood chips. When one of those machines gets going, best advice is to stay far back in order to avoid the flying tree parts.
It’s funny, they seem to have worked it out just fine.
It’s a short line. Maybe that can’t afford fancy boxcars with rotating platforms or tree cutting equipment for that once in a decades storm. Using a loco to cut tress is probably very common for short lines with limited resources.
No, Jeffery, smart Canadians. If you read the article the job was done in about 10 hours. If we used your method, first spend a day finding an old boxcar and digging it out of whatever backtrack it might be buried in. Of course the roof walks are long gone, so spend the next day building the platform and ladders, which must be securely fastened somehow to the car. (For the deluxe version you mention, perhaps a week designing and building.)
Now, several days later you are finally ready to start attacking the fallen timber. Meanwhile those “silly” Canadians have already been operating for several days, without the cost of your contraptions.
If ice storms of this magnitude with this much damage were regular occurrences, it might make sense to build a “line” car like the interurbans. But for a once in a lifetime event the low-tech method is more appropriate.
No Jeffery, smart Canadians. According to the article, in 10 hours they had the line clear and ready to operate.
Assuming the short line even had an old boxcar buried away in the yard, it would probably take the best part of a day to dig it out. Since roofwalks disappeared some years back, designing even a simple platform and ladder arrangement that meets today’s safety standards will probably take part of another day, and then you have to get the materials and equipment to build it. At least another day, probably two, completing the job. Now, at last, you go out on the line to clear the fallen timber. And that will still take 10 hours; meanwhile the customer has had to wait an additional four or five days.
While the railway gains a specially equipped boxcar, it is unlikely to be needed again for another 50 years. That is what would be silly. The quick and dirty solution used by the railway is also the smartest.
What kind of an idiot starts a post calling an entire nation “silly”, then talks about some kind of boxcar that sounds like it’s right out of Star Trek. Jeffery from Illinois I guess.
Well done fellas.
Mr. Guse, respectfully, you’ve got it wrong. Steve Bradley and the others on his team gave the right response under the circumstances. I am an operating veteran and worked regularly in that area when it was owned by CP, including on snow plows. The name of the game, whether a short line or major carrier is to get the line open safely, however you can do it. You don’t generate revenue when the line is blocked and you improvise if you have to. Nice job, well done and great photos!
I was in Moncton for training with VIA Rail Canada during the 1998 ice storm. We got the first eastbound Ocean that could get through to Montreal. The scene was amazing.
There were collapsed high tension wire towers all through Quebec. In one town, Ste. Hyacinthe, they were using a CN diesel for emergency power. In Montreal itself, helicopters were flying overhead breaking off ice from skyscrapers. There were towns that did not have power for months after the storm, but the railroad got through!
PS I was with a group of Americans and the folks in Moncton, which did not get the ice but had plenty of snow while we were there, jokingly told us that it must have been us coming to Canada that brought the snow as it rarely happened there!
It is time the Goose got off this site. When it comes to insulting a nation that is just ignorance. Good bye Goose and maybe you can find someone else to listen to your Hippocratic nonsense