While historic preservation is the focus of this site, history in the making certainly can't be overlooked. One of those 'in the making' events is taking place in the Midwest as Union Pacific digs out from the recent storms that have hit the area. Unlike most storms that can be cleaned up with MOW equipment, or maybe a spreader, this one was a bit larger forcing UP to get out a rotary, something that isn't seen mush today in modern railroading.

Course with technology as it is today, you don't have to wait to see what is happening (Matt Drudge once said something like anyone, anywhere can be a journalist now) you can see it as it happens. Someone on Trainorders.com has found that the current location of the rotary can be found using the UP steam trace - http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/excurs/trac ... 2879638672

But if knowing where it is isn't enough for you, check out these clips posted to YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=SkipW

Who said the good-old days are gone?

-Justin Franz

Also a link to a Denver TV station video about the UP's rotary train was posted on the Narrow Gauge Discussion Site. See the following for the posted link:
http://www.ngdiscussion.net/cgi-bin/NGDFcook.pl?read=86074

This may get you direct to the video:
http://wm.kusa.gannett.edgestreams.net/news/1167612992955-12-31-06-snowtrain-5p.wmv

I assume the current rotary is diesel or diesel/electric? Anyone have a link to technical information?

Thanks.

Wesley

From my friend, Paul Strubeck, a plow affecianado:

The rotary used is 900082. It was built in 71' from many different
parts laying around the shop. Inside houses a EMD 12-645E3 with
2500HP. It drives a clutch and gears driving the wheel. Theres a steam
generator in the back which provides for heat and tracer lines to keep
different parts thawed out. Theres no traction motors thus it has to
be pushed. The circle things on the windshield spin at high RPMs to
keep snow off and so the operators can maintain visibility.
The following link is of the UP Spec Sheet of it.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v287/ ... 1167786739

The "circle thing that spins" is called a Clear Vision Window. It was developed for use on the bridge of ships sailing in heavy seas. There is a small motor that drives a belt that spins the circular pane, and centrifugal force throws off rain, spray or snow. Works almost as well on snowplows. whether wedge or rotary.

It is interesting that they can run the whole train from the rotary cab, with jumpers and brake hoses back to the pushing units. The scene harkens back to the blizzard of 1949, when rail lines, roads and life in general across Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas came to a standstill for many days.

http://www.rootsweb.com/~neperkin/blizzard.html

On New Years Eve in Greeley, Colorado, it was 70 degrees. The next day, the situation was much like the recent one. The last four steam rotaries built for the US came about because of that storm, built for the UP, Soo Line and Rock Island in 1949 by Lima. The two UP rotaries still exist (plus other older ones). The Rock Island rotary was kept at my hometown of Goodland, Kansas, just 30 miles north of Sharon Springs, where the recent video was taken. Both it and the Soo unit were scrapped in the late-1960s. Not long before the Rock Island demise in 1980, they had to borrow one of the UP steam rotaries and crew to plow out the now-gone line between Limon and Colorado Springs. I believe it was the last use of a steam rotary in regular service in North America. One (or both) of the UP units had a tender from a C&O 2-8-8-2 that the UP had bought in WWII. This is the last one used, now on display at Hermiston, Oregon:

http://wasteam.railfan.net/snowplow/i31c.jpg

This is the other one, now at IRM:

http://www.hazegray.org/rail/snow/rotary/up08.jpg

Athearn still makes an HO scale model of the Lima plows:

http://www.athearn.com/Search/Default.a ... estSellers

The normal Denver rotary was this older one, originally from the Laramie, North Park & Western, now at the Forney Museum in Denver (photo was taken at the old museum site):

http://wasteam.railfan.net/snowplow/i21c.jpg

And here at Denver in 1970, about the time the old 40th Street roundhouse, its normal home, was torn down:

http://photoswest.org/cgi-bin/imager?00019564+OP-19564


It has been a real flip-flop this year. When I lived out there, a white Christmas was somewhat rare, while we almost always have had snow here in the Northeast. This year, we've hardly had any here and they have been buried out there.

According to the Union Pacific tracking site and a post over at Trainorders.com - the UP rotary and crew arrived safe and sound back at Cheyenne, Wye. today after a few days of rough winter railroading.

-Justin