Snow blower......

During the next to the last snow storm, a train got stuck in the snow near David City, Nebraska.

This is the rig that got it out.

Now, that's a snowblower!

Beats a PLOW, I guess!
Stuck

Back in the blizard of 78 they used those here in northwest Ohio.

I'm pretty sure I saw one just like it in the latest Harbor Freight flyer....


Glenn F.

What is the car behind the snowblower and ahead of the two drive engines or is that an engine too?

That is some deep snow, around here the tracks are elavated high so they usually keep clean.

Most of them are elevated, this just happens to be a low spot. If It's the place I'm thinking of, there's a curve and the engineer probably couldn't see how deep the snow was until he was in it.

Don't know what the second unit is. Believe it or not, this is about 25 miles from where I live and our daughter emailed me these photos from Washington DC. She picked them up on the Internet somewhere.

It might also be the spot where a guy I knew committed suicide a number of years ago. There's a grade crossing on a curve where the train crew can't see the crossing till they're right on it. The flip side is there's a stop sign because vehicle traffic can't see trains coming, and not enough traffic to rate cross arms.

This fellow I knew parked his car across the tracks when he knew a train was coming and laid down on the front seat. A couple of teenagers came along and asked if he was having trouble. He replied he was OK and knew what he was doing. The kids left and shortly thereafter a train came along and crunched him.

If those kids hadn't told their story, it probably would have been taken as an accident instead of suicide.

Rotary Snow Plow Power Unit.... That unit was built as a "cabless or helper" "B" unit Diesel-electric locomotive. Large electric cables are run from the generator on this old locomotive to a large electric motor which turns the rotary blower.

Bet that big blade needs all the power that can be thrown at it. Thanks for the information.

The tracks in our immediate area are raised way high but you get east and west of us and there are some places where there isnt much of a grade, but they are usually able to just plow, have never seen a big rotary like that up our way, they do have one with smaller twin rotors mounted into the v plow, then it blows both directions.


As far as the suicide, I have heard of people doing things like that too bad for everyone involved, i am sure it haunts the train operators who are unable to stop.