amazing Japanese train Snow Clearing

 

 amazing Japanese train Snow Clearing

Most modern railways today use modified ballast regulators, a piece of track maintenance equipment normally used to grade and groom the track ballast. Called snow fighters, they have snow blows, wing blades, and snow blowers. Track section crews use them to clear tracks of snow when too much accumulation builds up.
Snow on the tracks between stations is cleared with plows and snow blowers. The switches are cleared with shovels and brooms.
Ice and snow can also cause derailments, in my time working in Minnesota, and North Dakota, I was involved in several derailments caused by ice and snow build up between the rails that caused the equipment to derail because of lack of a flange way for the wheels to ride in on the inside edge of the rails. I even had a locomotive, which is normally heavy enough to cut through the ice built up at a road crossing derail because of the ice, but it re-railed when backed up.

 

amazing Japanese train Snow Clearing

It also makes for miserable working conditions, since every time a conductor needs to line a hand thrown switch, he or she must first sweep the snow out of the switch, and then scrape the build up of snow away from the rail heads and switch points, so they will slide over and fit tightly against the stock rail. The dual control power switches have propane fired snow melting equipment to keep them clear of snow for the switch motor to line the switch.

Ice and snow and cold weather slow down all railroad operations, and when it gets too severe with snow blocking the main tracks, the railroad has to bring out the snow fighting equipment to clear the snow off the tracks, whether it is the smaller, self propelled “snow fighter”, which is a ballast shaping machine fitted with a bigger front plow for winter, or the snow plows pushed by locomotives, running as a “plow extra” or for really deep snow, a rotary snow blower pushed by locomotives, before the regular trains can operate on the affected tracks.

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