Just the other night I watched an interesting program about clearing Donner Pass. I was intrigued by the steam rotary snowplow that was called to rescue a flanger work train that had gotten stuck in an avalanche, and clear the Pass that the Jordan Spreaders and flangers could not handle. The rotaries are, indeed, awesome machines! And the use of steam is quite logical in that it is used also to keep the plow blades from freezing up and 'sticking'. There was a quite good explanation of the processes involved in the use of these SP rotaries, built in 1923. The Road Foreman commented that he didn't understand how the rail buffs found out that the rotary was coming because there was gaggles of fans all along the route up the Pass to see the plow work. Some rail buffs were even up at the summit of Donner Pass, and how the heck they got up there in a raging blizzard was beyond the RFE's understanding. He called 'em "Goofy" 
! Which I thought was quite funny considering that would've been my own description of a lot of rail fans I encountered in my career! "Goofy"!
Anyway, being that I worked with a lot of machinery on the railroad myself on Norfolk Southern, I would love to watch a rotary snowplow work! I doubt you'd find me up on Donner Pass to do it, tho!!! LOL!
GF
! Which I thought was quite funny considering that would've been my own description of a lot of rail fans I encountered in my career! "Goofy"!Anyway, being that I worked with a lot of machinery on the railroad myself on Norfolk Southern, I would love to watch a rotary snowplow work! I doubt you'd find me up on Donner Pass to do it, tho!!! LOL!
GF
