I hope this opens (my first attempt at posting a photo. I thought this might be of interest to you all.
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Santa Fe had a jet engine on a flatcar for blowing sand off of the track in the Cadiz, California, area.
One winter when I was Engineer on the Victorville Road Switcher, they brought it in to clear a heavy snowfall in the yard. The short story is that the jet blew all the snow off off the yard tracks, as well as everything that was not spiked down. Rocks and debris knocked out all the windows of the section house. The Section Foreman's prize 1951 Chevrolet was parked beside the section house, and, in addition to having all the glass blown out, flying objects pitted the chrome and inflicted a number of dents in the body.
The jet blower went back to the desert to finish its days, and was never again seen west of Barstow.
Looks like something Wilie E would use to try to slow down the Roadrunner!
@Dominic Mazoch posted:Looks like something Wilie E would use to try to slow down the Roadrunner!
Haha, yes. If Wile E. Coyote had operated that snow blower, after it destroyed the Maintenance of Way area at Victorville, it would have taken off westward at high speed and the next Eastbound train through iVctorville would have dropped off Wile E. in bandages, on crutches, and generally looking poor.
Number 90, Wow that's an amazing story so did the rail road pay for damages to the Car?
I've seen another one of these more recent and more modern on you tube only I think it was used to thaw out ice jammed points and related mechanical equipment. It seems there was no limit to the stuff people came up with connected to the rail road.
Stan.
Pretty cool scene - there seemed to be a lot of brass around inspecting the progress! The location was Dowlais Top station in Wales. Winter 1947 was a mean one in the U.K. with extremely heavy snowfalls by British standards.
@Stantheman55 posted:Number 90, Wow that's an amazing story so did the rail road pay for damages to the Car? . . . Stan.
You bet!
That Section Foreman was hotter than a twenty dollar stove, and immediately got hold of the Roadmaster, who immediately got the Claims Agent visit him and arrange to repair the '51 Chevy to its former immaculate condition -- body work, complete paint job and re-chroming, new glass and upholstery, the whole deal. The railroad wanted to quickly take care of damages in the hope of making the whole episode fade away.
Number 90 & Firewood
Glad to hear that the car was totally restored, One of those great opps's in forgotten rail road history. I can only imaging the many many forgotten and un-recorded incidences that have happened that would be interesting to read about but yet we will never know because there buried in forgotten ( some on purpose) History.
Fire wood:
Thanks so much for the time capsule link about Top station. I find looking back at old stations and places in general and seeing before and after pictures just so interesting. It pains me to see the old rail line gone to be replaced with a road.
Here in Central Florida they replaced many branch lines and spurs with rails to trails. Big mistake (imho) I think they should have kept the rails and converted them to inter town trolley runs along side jogging / bike paths.
This would have solved the problem of cross town traffic flow problems to and from work/shopping and also it would have connected to the main line which was converted to inter city transit. Out lying towns would have had a means of transportation to the transit system.
Right now many of the train stops are out in the middle of no where so taking the train to go shopping is point less, its only used to get people to work and they need transportation to and from the station to the Job once they get there, walking is out of the question (to faraway). maybe in 50 years (if it lasts that long) things will have been built up around the stations. Till then its an on going experiment.
Stan.
