i had mentioned stay tuned for this posting!?

It's the cost.

Railroads exist to make money. That is their goal. The bottom line is all that matters. It has been that way since railroading's beginnings. The public is nothing more than canon fodder to them whenever the inevitable derailments do maximum havoc, the extent of that havoc attributed to tonnage alone, in the end. On or off the rail, 8,000 tons stops in a whole lot shorter distance than does 13,000 or more, and the DPUs alter that none at all. The only help is that the emergency application of the brakes will take effect maybe two seconds earlier. And that's it.

So it is the same when it comes to snow removal ops. But do not make any assumptions. Anyone familiar with railroading will tell you the only thing that is absolute around the railroad is that there are no absolutes. So they don't call for the cavalry right away. It is a process.

The locos do handle the snows for a while. In fact, when there is snow on the ground and a storm if forecast, they will at time reduce tonnage of trains for just that reason. But, the pilot plow doesn't do well for very long. They are a handy little scoop, but when you're dragging along at 18 mph or less, as when climbing heavy grade, they don't through the snow out too far. Ot takes higher speed for that. The result is, even running trains block to block, a core is going to build up quickly. Then, it's going to fill in. I've run tonnage trains out of Norden, needing to work power, pushing so much snow. I was on a helper behind the cab once and a downhill train working power slammed all the snow into the side of the caboose and blew out the windows. It nailed my cab right below my window. So, it can get radical. Best to take the snow out of the equation.

In light snow conditions, most roadmasters will send out a couple of ballast regulators to keep things tidy. And for a while, they can cope.

The clean-up squad consists of three pieces of equipment - a flanger is equipped with retractable

plow shaped scoops equipped with replaceable blades underneath. They throw the ice and snow either to the right hand side or the left hand side. Each blade has a little metal 'flag' visible from the locomotive cab, a semi-semaphore, has a letter L or R, and one flag is green, the other red. The blades are operated by air cylinders to move them up or down. A crew man will lower the blades that do extend below the top of the rail level. This is done to keep ice and snow from building up between the rails. The blades are drawn upward (retracted) wherever there is a switch, crossing or hand car set off. These are marked with “flanger boards.” Usually orange in color, they look like ½ of the letter ‘wye’ atop a tall post. These will identify the location of these types of things so that they can be looked out for when buried under the always generous snow pack.

They have their limit and leave behind a deep core. Now the Jorden goes to work just like Andy says. They are equipped with wings that can extend up to 18 feet on each side in a wedge shape, but usually you do one side at a time. Wherever possible, you push the snow to the downhill side. If an embankment is involved, then snow can be compacted in short order.

That's when the wide wing rotaries make the scene and really clear this stuff out. I'm talking 150 rooster tail. It is amazing to see.

But the truth is, the huge storms that were frequent visitors in the past only drop in occasionally.

"In January, 1952, California was whipped by a series of storms which threatened to isolate the state. Eighteen feet of snow covered the mountains along the summit. On January 13 the crack streamliner City of San Francisco, with 126 passengers and 30 crewmen aboard, was halted by a snow slide. The train remained embedded in the snow for the next three days. The railroad sent in three doctors to assist the one doctor who happened to be aboard. One physician was rushed in by dog sled, another by work train and a third, who couldn't land, by Coast Guard helicopter. The engineer of a rotary lost his life when his equipment was hurled from the track by another snow slide. By the cooperative and heroic efforts of railroad men, and state highway workers, the marooned passengers were taken out safely by nightfall of the 16th. Three days later, 300 men and powerful equipment, working around the clock, freed the train and the locomotives that had been stalled around it. Winter in the Sierra Nevada had proved that it still swung a club."

Having spent my railway career driving trains in southern England, where I never encountered snow more than four inches deep over the rail head, I can't speak from personal experience!

However, I seems obvious to me that the kind of snowdrifts that require the attention of the heavy-duty equipment - rotary snowploughs, snow-blowers and the like - tend to build up rapidly in narrow single-track cuttings. The snow that blocks them is not only that which comes from directly above: most of it is blown into the cutting from the surrounding exposed terrain by the wind. Such locations are common the world over where railroads cross mountain ranges. Running frequent locomotives/trains wont solve the problem, as they will only push the snow aside, and in a narrow location it has no-where else to go but to blow back again on to the track after the train has passed. The only solution is to use rotaries and snow-blowers to move the snow as far away from the track as possible.

I could finish by saying that, here in the UK, the worst snow-falls that interfere with railroad operations occur in the more exposed and/or remote areas for the same reasons as above: high winds blowing snow into cuttings from the surroundings, where it can become several feet deep within a couple of hours. However, such drifts are rarely deeper than can be dealt with by a couple of locomotives coupled to full-height ordinary snow ploughs at either end.

When the snow starts really coming down they put on crews that head up the mountain in snow service.They start with flangers and Jordan spreaders.They only bring the rotary out when things get really serious.In New Mexico where i run too we usually do own own plowing with the engines.We have had to use a Jordan spreader a few times though.Samurai will be able to give you a much better answer as he used to work the Sierras up over the Donner Pass.I never got to work snow service there,just Amtrak trains.

In the Bitterroots of western Montana when the snow was coming down heavy the rotarys would work around the clock, they had about 40 miles or very difficult territory not to mention the sidings and yard tracks, they werent tryint to let it build up that deep, they couldnt keep up.

Still gotta get the plow equipment out of the way and run trains too.

Clearing your driveway doesn't involve the cost of extra locomotives that may not be needed in dry weather, or the cost of crews to man them, or the fuel to run them. Snow equipment, like on a pick-up, can be removed and the locomotive used as normal during the warm months. And why run multiple trips when one locomotive can clear snow using a blower while all the crews for the delayed trains are getting Federally mandated rest?