would athearns new rotary plow be appropriate for a railroad set in the 1930’s? also, are rotary plows self propelled, or do they have to have a locomotive to push it? thanks for the help.
Don’t know the era question, but do know rotaries are not self propelled, they are pushed by locomotives.
Bob Boudreau
The rotar on early rotory snow plows were steam powered. They had coal/water tenders and were pushed by locomotives and are not self propelled. The Athearn rotary doesn’t come with a tender.
See Denver & Rio Grande Western steam rotary snowplows
For deisel era rotary snow plows, see The Southern Pacific Snow Fighters
Walthers made a Leslie Rotory Snowplow with tender that would be appropriate for the steam era. But you will have to search for them, Walthers is sold out.
thanks for the help. bob, it seems like everytime i go to my LHS and start thumbing through back issues of mags, i see an article or photo taken by you. i never put two and two together until i grabed an issue with your modules on the from. you do great work. GSetter, very interesting site thank you for the link. the new athearn plow is being offered with the old MDC oil burning tender here is the link http://www.athearn.com/Search/Default.aspx?SearchTerm=rotary%20snow%20plow again thanks for the help, i really do appreciate it.
I think rotaries were often oil-burners. The Walthers model is.
Rotary snowplows go back to the 1890’s-1900’s. Interestingly, a rival design at that time was available that was basically a big corkscrew. Supposedly it worked better but had some limitations - like you could only blow snow one way instead of to either side like with a rotary.
That makes sense that western railroads converted to oil fired steam since the west had little coal at the time and huge supply of oil. So a oil tender would be appropriate for the 1930’s era.
Does anyone know of any rotary plows operating in the eastern mountains? I haven’t heard of N&W, Virginian or C&O having them.
Thanks! Now you told me something I didn’t know.
The Athearn plow is now motorized too. Before it had a rubber band drive that didn’t work all that well.
Bob Boudreau
What’s next? Sound?[8D]
Some plows today use diesel traction motors to power the rotor and get power from a “b” unit instead of a tender. The plow still has to be pushed. An oil fired steam generator is still needed to heat the rotor housing to keep the parts from freezing up.
Actually, there was a lot of coal in the West - Colorado and Utah in particular, and Colorado lines like the D&RGW, S&SL and CM all used coal-fired rotaries. The OM and OY are still at Chama and the C&TS fires up the OY every once in awhile to use on Cumbres Pass. I think the SP’s rotaries were coal, but the Milwaukee Road beats all - they had at least one electric rotary with a pantograph to draw power from the electrified trolley wire.
I was hoping for actual snow flying out the chute. [:D]
Obviously the Long Island Railroad had one. It’s at Steamtown.
The new Athearn RTR Rotary plows come with tenders and have motorized blades. www.athearn.com
As was already mentioned in this thread.
Bob Boudreau
a heavy snow train has Two rotary plows, two fuel tenders, and four locomotives, one plow at each end, incase there is a snowslide behind the unit it won’t be trapped.
plow-fuel tender -loco-loco-loco-loco- fuel tender-plow
Niether the N&W nor VGN had one, I cannot say about the C&O, but I doubt it.
The Leslie plow by Walthers looks like it could be used to make a decent SP plow. Doesn’t look like it would take a lot more than plating the windows over and replacing them with portholes, and some modification to the roofline, and it might not be half bad. Mate it up with an F9-B painted black, and you’ve got an SP Plow/snail setup.
I may have to start keeping an eye out for a Leslie plow.
James
Added note - the SP plows are Leslie plows: http://n6ecv.net/Rotarys.html
If you do that conversion James the Mad keep in mind that SP added steam operated extender wings at the time of the electric conversion to the rotary housing to increase the cut and hence the volume of snow collected.
SP also installed heavy steel me***o all window openings as protection against dirty slide invading the occupied spaces and a multitude of hand holds, walkways and other safety devices. SP installed roller bearings in the orginal trucks and the power unit was secured to the rotary with a welded and chained coupler assembly to prevent jack knifing in case of derailment. All hose/steam lines were wrapped in duct tape to prevent seperation, additionaly de-icing solution was used on all lines as well
The Athearn is based upon a Leslie Brothers design, first built in the twenties, when Leslie failed during the depression, Lima aquired the patent and continued to produce them virtually unchanged until about 1947.
Dave
Obvious to everyone but me [D)]
I really should make a pilgrimage to Steamtown [bow]
Thanks Tom! [tup]