Union Pacific Railroad "City of San Francisco" at Cheyenne, Wyoming in September, 1939

ID# 25,029

UNION PACIFIC 8444

ID # 25,744

UNION PACIFIC 8444

A portriat of the UP's big Northern at Laramie, Wyoming, Sept. 1, 1963.

Photo by Mike Eagleson

Southern Pacific Rotary Snowplow

ID # 1,042

SOUTHERN PACIFIC ROTARY SNOWPLOW

Snow-fighting has always been a serious problem for American railroads, except in the South. Western roads built snowsheds over their tracks in the mountains and locomotives were fitted with wedge-shaped plows. Long ago, trains were sometimes lost for hours, even days, in blizzards. Near Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1872, a passenger train was snowbound for two weeks. Invention of the rotary piow, such as the one in this picture, in the 1880's simplified the problem. But even as late as February 22, 1910, an entire Great Northern passenger train, snowbound for four days outside the old Cascade Tunnel in Washington, was hurled down a slope by an avalanche, with a death toll of 101. Among the devices used today to fight snow are snow fences, fixed electric or gas switch-heaters, portable oilburning pots set between the ties, torches, chemicals, and bulldozer scrapers. Then too, gangs of men stand ready to shovel snow. One good way to keep the line open during a blizzard is to run a train over it every half-hour, day and night.

SOUTHERN PACIFIC LINES