Turntable Snow Maintenance

I am building a turntable for my HO scale layout, and this question came to mind:

How did the railroads remove the snow from the turntable pits, especially on the northern US and Canada lines ? When you think about the cubic ft. displacement of those pit areas, if manual means were used… there were a lot of guys with shovels down in that pit !

Thanks, Bob [?]

ALCO GE,

Many thanks for all the great information… having seen some large T/T’s in the past, I can certainly appreciate all the work done by the Extra Gang clearing the pit area, and clearing switches in such weather conditions.
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Thank you again for your response… Bob