Snow, traction motor failure and ground faults

[St-Jean Diamond]

After seeing locomotives spit out snow from everywhere after encounters with snow drifts and snowbanks, I wondered how bad it is to the internals of a GE locomotive. Why GE? Because I heard lots of stories on these beast on being fragile concening snow; is this true true?

Here are examples of snow battling to illustate my point (and what a show it was!) :
http://www.rail-videos.net/video/view.php?id=1422
http://www.rail-videos.net/video/view.php?id=1646

and for desert:
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 004&nseq=1

[MEC407]

As far as I can tell, MMA has been having much better luck this year, in regards to their locomotives dealing with snow.

I had heard that the reason they had problems in previous years was because many of the traction motors, which had been rebuilt by an outside contractor, were not up to snuff. Perhaps that problem has since been remedied.

By the way: you are quickly becoming my favorite video contributor on Rail-Videos.net!

[CN_Hogger]

I had an ex-SP B40-8 as a second unit about a month ago and after about 60 miles of hitting plowed over crossings and drifts in tripped the ground relay and set about 6 other codes in the computer that needed to be reset. If it was directly due to the snow, I'm not sure, but it sure seemed like it.

[CassFireman]

Our 44 tonner has SD-38 plows on it. I'd hate to see it in the deep stuff though.