Rotory Snow Plows

Brian Hebert · **Posted:** Fri Mar 30, 2001 7:04 pm

Today here in Bartlett, New Hampshire it is snowing again. We have had so much snow this winter that we (The Conway Scenic Railroad) are getting nervous about our opening day Fri. 13th.
It figures we'd open on Friday the 13th!
Anyway, we have been working like dogs trying to clear switches of snow and ice, and crossings of the same. Old man winter is a tough old b******! Each time we get dug out, a new snowstorm comes and buries us again. I feel as though I've shoveled enough snow to fill Fenway Park!
My question to you all is have Rotory Snow Plows ever operated in the east?
Here on the old Maine Central Mountain Division, wedge plows were used. It looks like it was a lot of work for those men long ago. I can sympathize with them. I know their pain!
I'm just not sure why they wouldn't have used a rotory? Seems like it would have been ideal.
Today, we are in the same boat. Sort of. Could a rotory still operate here? I'd say yes if the money could be found to purchase (or lease) one.
That brings up a few more questions. How many Rotorys are out there? Are they all owned by a railroad or are they contracted out for snow removal work?
I think the rotory plow is the most interesting piece of machinery to watch work next to the locomotives. Who sells good Rotory plow videos?

Brian

btamper@hotmail.com

Greg Scholl · **Posted:** Fri Mar 30, 2001 9:16 pm

Who sells good
> Rotory plow videos?

> Brian

We have made 5! 3 Rotary and 2 wedge. Sounds like you could use a standard gauge one. Tell Gary Webster I still appreciate his hospitality when we visited in 1989. Link below will get you to the plows on our site. Enjoy!
Greg "The Snowman" Scholl

Snow plow Videos

sales@gregschollvideo.com

Ron Goldfeder · **Posted:** Fri Mar 30, 2001 10:57 pm

I'm not sure if it was the furthest east, but the Long Island Railroad had a rotary snowplow. We have the biggest ever made at the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, which came from the Union Pacific, and can be seen on our website. Its cutting wheel is 12 feet in diameter, and the two the others the UP had at the time (before getting all the SP ones) used a cutting wheel 11' 6" in diameter.

Museum of Transportation
rdgoldfede@aol.com

J.B.Bane (SVRy) · **Posted:** Fri Mar 30, 2001 11:26 pm

I too have been interested in rotary plows and have wondered how many are still out there and how many are still operable. I have seen 4 out here in Ore. and Id. One is an electric, (I presume the power comes from a diesel elec. loco,) at Eugene Ore. at the old SP roundhouse and was letterd for SP. There are 2 at Hermiston, Ore. at a RR. park. They are UP units. One is electric, the other is Alco steam. I have been told that it is the last steam rotary Alco built, but can't confirm that. The fourth plow out in this neck of the woods is in Lewiston, Id. on the Camas Prarrie RR. It is also an electric. Did these electric units get their power from a special diesel loco that was always used with the plow or could any diesel elec. loco be used?

jamesbane@hotmail.com

Chris H. · **Posted:** Fri Mar 30, 2001 11:55 pm

Just a guess but I figure that most winters there wasn't enough snow here in NH to justify the expense and upkeep of a rotary plow. I'm here in Lincoln and this has been the heaviest winter I've seen in a few years. I figure most of the time a wedge plow was enough, if hard work for the crews. I remember reading something about incidents where the B&M got blocked by snow in one of the books I have on the White Mountain logging railroads; and extra engines and crews being needed to push through, I think this was in reference to B&M's borrowing of engines from J.E Henry's logging operations. Hope to get over to Conway sometime this year; I wonder if #501 is still sitting static outside..

Today here in Bartlett, New Hampshire it is
> snowing again. We have had so much snow this
> winter that we (The Conway Scenic Railroad)
> are getting nervous about our opening day
> Fri. 13th.
> It figures we'd open on Friday the 13th!
> Anyway, we have been working like dogs
> trying to clear switches of snow and ice,
> and crossings of the same. Old man winter is
> a tough old b******! Each time we get dug
> out, a new snowstorm comes and buries us
> again. I feel as though I've shoveled enough
> snow to fill Fenway Park!
> My question to you all is have Rotory Snow
> Plows ever operated in the east?
> Here on the old Maine Central Mountain
> Division, wedge plows were used. It looks
> like it was a lot of work for those men long
> ago. I can sympathize with them. I know
> their pain!
> I'm just not sure why they wouldn't have
> used a rotory? Seems like it would have been
> ideal.
> Today, we are in the same boat. Sort of.
> Could a rotory still operate here? I'd say
> yes if the money could be found to purchase
> (or lease) one.
> That brings up a few more questions. How
> many Rotorys are out there? Are they all
> owned by a railroad or are they contracted
> out for snow removal work?
> I think the rotory plow is the most
> interesting piece of machinery to watch work
> next to the locomotives. Who sells good
> Rotory plow videos?

> Brian

northen99@yahoo.com

Keith Albrandt · **Posted:** Sat Mar 31, 2001 12:57 am

> That brings up a few more questions. How
> many Rotorys are out there?
> Brian

The Nevada Northern Railway Museum in Ely has a Cooke rotary built in 1907. According to their most recent newsletter, their No. 1 long-term goal is to restore it.

The link below will take you directly to my photo gallery page. Click on locomotives and scroll down for a photo.

Cheers!

Nevada Northern & Railroads of White Pine County
kalbran1@san.rr.com

David Althaus · **Posted:** Sat Mar 31, 2001 1:02 am

I grew up in Big Stone City, SD. The BNSF runs through there mostly hauling coal from Eastern Wyoming to power plants. They commonly are pulling 100 car coal trains. The power plants keep a few day's supply of coal on hand just incase the RR can't deliver for some reason but that supply won't last very long at the rate they burn coal at the power plant. Accordingly, it becomes pretty important that the tracks be kept open. This year was a very bad one for snow. Ten foot drifts across the tracks wasn't uncommon. A couple of weeks ago I saw in the hometown paper that a BNSF rotary plow blew apart as it tried to eat away one of the real big drifts. The paper had a picture of the the rotary unit. The front end rotor literally exploded. The whole front looked like there had been 100 sticks of dynamite let loose. The steel shroud was twisted like paper and didn't even look like a shroud anymore. Parts of the blades were imbedded deep into the frozen ground and others were thrown hundereds of yards from the plow. The RR crews were in front of the train in the picture with picks and shovels trying to get the buried parts out of the ground. The next day they brought in another rotary plow from Aberdeen SD to finish the job. The paper didn't say what caused it to blow/explode apart.

DWALTHAUS@AOL.COM

Frank Hicks · **Posted:** Sat Mar 31, 2001 1:08 am

> The Nevada Northern Railway Museum in Ely
> has a Cooke rotary built in 1907. According
> to their most recent newsletter, their No. 1
> long-term goal is to restore it.

That sounds like a fascinating piece of equipment. The Illinois Railway Museum has a large Union Pacific rotary snowplow; it is #900075, built in 1949 by Lima.

A small sub-category of snowfighting equipment is electric street railway rotary plows. The only extant one I know if is at the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven, Connecticut. I know they've operated it in the past, but I don't know its present condition.

Weren't the mainline electric rotary plows, mentioned elsewhere in this thread to be preserved at various sites out west, originally built for the Milwaukee Road electrification?

Frank Hicks

Ray Dewley · **Posted:** Sat Mar 31, 2001 8:15 am

An older friend of mine that was an engineer in the boiler room has told me that the mill would loan out a Shay or Baldwin locomotive to help bring up a heavy train into Lincoln up some of those last grades and curves. I imagine that would happen in the snow also.... no train in, no train out.

Ray

http://www.gsmr.com/great.htm

Greg Scholl · **Posted:** Sat Mar 31, 2001 10:15 am

Without a doubt one of the best shows on earth is the opening of the Cumbres Pass on the Cumbres and Toltec. One Rotary(OY)and usually Three 2-8-2's pushing. Thats FOUR steam engines at work, with the sight and sound experience incredible. With all the steam I had witnessed prior to seeing the Rotary, I was awe-struck by this snow eating monster! It just doesn't get much better!
Unfortunately it costs the railroad about $10,000.00 a day to operate it, so they try to avoid it when possible(last time used was 1997).
Steamingly,
Greg Scholl

Videos

sales@gregschollvideo.com

J.B.Bane (SVRy) · **Posted:** Sat Mar 31, 2001 6:57 pm

Frank, when I mentioned the several mainline electric rotary plows, I didn't mean that they had derived their power from overhead catenary. They have cables hanging out the back as though they would derive their power from the diesel elec. locos pushing.

jamesbane@hotmail.com

Steve Gilbert · **Posted:** Sun Apr 01, 2001 12:02 am

> My question to you all is have Rotory Snow
> Plows ever operated in the east?
> Brian

This brings up a long standing mystery:

There's a list of Rotary Plows sold by Leslie, which shows #43 as being built by Cooke, completed in January, 1893, for the PHILADELPHIA AND READING RAILROAD!!

We, at the Reading T&HS have not been able to find a thing about this (in the Reading archives which we have access to), and so far nobody in READING circles knows anything about it. Was it even delivered to the P&R ?

Are there any ROTARY authorities out there that can shed some light on this ?

Brian Norden · **Posted:** Mon Apr 02, 2001 3:05 am

> That brings up a few more questions. How
> many Rotorys are out there? Are they all
> owned by a railroad or are they contracted
> out for snow removal work?

The White Pass and Yukon Route restored its steam rotary a few years ago and they have been using it for show each year since then. The line is closed down during the winter but each spring the remaining snow is removed by bulldozers except for an area near the highway north of the summit. That portion of the line is opened by the rotary.

See the White Pass web site.

Brian Norden

White Pass and Yukon Route
bnorden@gateway.net

Brian Fritz · **Posted:** Mon Apr 02, 2001 1:14 pm

> That brings up a few more questions. How
> many Rotorys are out there?

Andrew Toppan maintains a list of Rotary Snowplows and other snow removal equipment at the link below:

http://membrane.com/~elmer/rail/snow/

I've also got photos of snow removal equipment (including rotaries) on my "Other Steam - Railroad Snowplows" page (see link at bottom).

Here's a photo of NP #10 preserved at the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie WA.

Washington Steam Railroads and Locomotives

brianfr@speakeasy.org

Brian Fritz · **Posted:** Mon Apr 02, 2001 3:14 pm

> I have been told that it is the last steam rotary Alco built, but can't confirm that.

It was built by Lima-Baldwin-Hamilton in 12/1949, this steam rotary was last used on the Rock Island in 3/1977 and was retired in 6/1985.

The Lima is on the right. The plow on the left was originally a steam plow built by Alco in 2/1910, this plow was converted to electric operation by the CMStP&P. It was transferred to the UP in 1982 and retired in 1988.

Washington Steam Railroads and Locomotives

brianfr@speakeasy.org