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  • how do railroads handle heavy snow?

  • General discussion about railroad operations, related facilities, maps, and other resources.
General discussion about railroad operations, related facilities, maps, and other resources.

Moderator: Robert Paniagua

 #750155  by hutton_switch
 
Equipment that does snowblowing is more common to the west and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In the east, deep snows are generally cleared with equipment called Jordan Spreaders. This YouTube link shows one in action in New York: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkdLcaYfdFA.
 #750270  by Ken W2KB
 
NJ Transit keeps extra trains/locos moving over its lines during the storm locos have permanent small plows that are fine if a train moves over the track every couple or three hours. MOW crews are sent to interlockings to shovel swicthes if needed.
 #750369  by Shark
 
airman00 wrote:Just curious...how do railroads handle nasty/rough weather such as heavy snow?
They give the conductor a broom...if one is available.
 #750504  by Ken W2KB
 
Shark wrote:
airman00 wrote:Just curious...how do railroads handle nasty/rough weather such as heavy snow?
They give the conductor a broom...if one is available.
"if one is available." Conductor or broom? :wink:
 #751422  by ExCon90
 
When heavy snows are predicted, railroads will often avoid crossing trains over, and "straight-rail" interlockings so that switches don't get blocked by packed snow. This means temporarily losing the flexibility of running a faster train around a slower one, but eliminates the risk of reversing a switch and then not being able to restore it. (This really requires two parallel main tracks.) One memorable year in Buffalo (and to call a snowstorm in Buffalo "memorable" is saying something) every available empty gondola was filled with plowed snow (there was nowhere else to dump it) and sent south until the snow melted. The empties were then distributed where needed.
 #752917  by SooLineRob
 
ExCon90 wrote:... every available empty gondola was filled with plowed snow (there was nowhere else to dump it) and sent south until the snow melted. The empties were then distributed where needed.
Winter 92-93 by any chance?

I recall a "SNO-101" heading south towards Philadelphia (CSX Park Jct) with coal hoppers loaded with snow. Conrail was using their front end loaders to dump snow into the hoppers, and sent them south to CSX to melt that winter.

I also recall Conrail allowing employees to stay at the local hotel at their home terminal if they were available for work on their rest, no matter what their assignment was (yard or road). The Crew Dispatchers figured if the guys got home, they'd mark off ... so why not put 'em up for the day/night and have people available in 8 hours!
 #753534  by RedLantern
 
That seems like an interesting concept, I know that many cities have huge "snow dumps" where they pile all the snow they plow off the roads and build a mountain and let it melt. Some cities (like New York) even put snow onto barges to be moved somewhere else.

With the unit coal trains heading up to the northeast and heading back south empty, snow removal would seem like a good way for the railroads to make some extra revenue while moving the empty cars back south to the mines.
 #753547  by 2nd trick op
 
Best reference I know of on the railroads' handling of snow was Gerald Best's Snowplow; Clearing Mountain Rails, published sometime back in the late 1960's. It covered snowsheds, plus everything from flangers to rotaries.

Of course, with the number of routes contracting and the industry somewhat less attuned to rigid scheduling, the need for keeping lines open at any cost has diminished. UP has had two options for crossing the Sierra Nevadas for a quarter century now, and it's been several years since the rotaries have operated over Donner summit.

A Keystone (PRR Historical Society publication) from about ten years ago contained a first-hand account of how the Pennsy recruited idle able-bodied men off the streets of Manhattan to sweep switches at major interlocking plants on the New York Division during a major storm back in the mid-1960's. Not likely to be repeated in the present atmosphere of security- and liability-obsession.