http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ypVlTyTC_8

I recall back in the 1960s Seashore Trolley Museum's monster interurban (Quebec Railway Light & Power # 454) was clearing the main line using a plow mounted on one end. The motorman cranked up the power under to ascend grade. As the Canadian electric rounded a sweeping curve and crossed the cow "tunnel" underpass, two snowmobilers came into view. Fortunately, a couple blasts from the air horn "encouraged" the surprised trespassers to flee the right-of-way.

Sloan

We had interesting forensic evidence the other week. There's a small cut just before Fairview crossing at the yard limit. Seems a northbound snowmobile T-boned the cut. There were drag/exit tracks out to the crossing.

Some other bonehead took a sweep through the yard over the weekend. Got into trouble with the main track elevation at one point - there were a lot of carbide cleat and ski marks on the rail head where he clawed his way free.

Now if he had just tried that fifty yards to the west where the open maw of the ashpit awaited him under the snow cover ... [please, no lectures or finger-wagging about liability/lawsuits - enjoy the humor of it.]

"

It is indeed a man-eater--I've seen it swallow a famous photographer in a single gulp.

He went down muttering something that sounded a like "To the last, I grapple with thee, 475; from hell's heart, I trip my shutter at thee; for love's sake, I expose my last frame at thee."

And only I am left to tell...

"Abandon hope all ye who enter there ..."

Isn't that from StarTrek? :-)

Bob

End of Moby Dick, actually--but quoted by Kahn, yes.

The guy I saw go for a dip had a New York Rangers jersey on and a couple of cameras. He was too embarassed to complain as he looked like a candy apple with peanuts on it.

I think Trains had an article several years ago about a shortline in New York that pretty much turned into a snowmobile trail in the winter. A locomotive was running light and hit solid ice packed down from the snowmobiles (no flangeway) and derailed, rolling off down the embankment. I enjoy snowmobiling and can say that some of the old rail lines/turned snowmobile trails around Marquette, MI are some of the best trails around. But to ride on a track is just plain stupid, especially if you caught a carbide on the rail at speed.

I think that the subject of this thread should have read snowmobilers and not snowmobiles. It's the person in the seat that is the problem, not the machine itself.

Les

I believe the quote was from Dante's Inferno.

So it is. Dante tells that it's written above the gates to hell. And it's often quoted.

Back in the day, Michigan Northern in the late 1970's. A snowmobile dealer took a floor model out for a spin to show it to a friend. He used the railroad and at a scenic spot, a high fill combined with an S curve, they got off to "stretch their legs". Along came a train powered by a locomotive with a pilot plow. The shop owner told me afterwards, "I was thinking that wasn't a good place to park." He was able to show his friend what the underside of the snowmobile looked like as it went over their heads. Fortunately no one got hurt.

I must say..that OLI video was one of the lamest I have ever seen. Its a joke.