In the wake of Blizzard Juno, which dumped 2 feet of snow in southeast Connecticut, the Valley Railroad hauled out its
century+ old former Hoosac Tunnel & Wilmington homebuilt snowplow. GE 80-Ton Centercab 0901, built 1940, was the power.
Here is a link to a video of the plowing operation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oSke8vbJjQ

Enjoy,
Lee
ebtmikado

Posts: 261
Joined: Tue Mar 11, 2008 11:55 am
Location: Madison, CT
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Love it! I've spent a lot of time in HT&W country and over the years I became interested in surviving relics of all the southern VT (originally) narrow gauge routes. There's not much left (though The West River RR station in Newfance apparently has just been acquired by the local historical society) and I think the plow is the only operable piece of rolling stock from one of these lines (albeit, post-standard gauging).

Rob

I probably won't be around, but let's see if any U-boats are still running at age 75. Those GE centercabs are real tanks, compared to many of GE's later 'cost engineered' offerings.

Very nice video. Nice use of the historic equipment, too!

That is cool. Did they have a reason to clear the line, or was this just for fun?

They have a special event coming up where they run the train for people to maybe view Bald eagles along the Connecticut River.

Thanks ---

see

http://essexsteamtrain.com/event/eagle- ... 015-02-14/

From the looks of things, things were pretty much cleared out on the local roads when they ran the plow and it's better to do that after the roads are cleared because they you can get rid of the snow banks the road plows left.posting.php?mode=quote&f=1&p=227090#

Any bets that they'll have to do this again or that their passengers for the eagle trip will need snow shoes?

Bob H

Rob, the Shelburne Falls (MA) Trolley Museum has a standard gauge 'flat car' that is reported to be, and looks to be, the frame from the tender for HT&W No. 5. It came from the Valley Railroad when 0-6- No. 10 came here (now at Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum), it was intended to be a tender for it at one time.
I skied 6 miles of the HT&W Saturday.

The Baltimore Streetcar Museum has found a most novel way to keep all these snowstorms of recent memory away from Baltimore: They acquired an ex-Phila. Traction Co./SEPTA snowsweeper several years ago.

Since its acquisition in 2005, it's had perhaps three snowfalls worthy of its operation, no matter how eager the crews and one official there may be to "play in the snow" with it.

Last night we got about an inch of snow. It became rain before daybreak and was all gone by noon.