In my imagination, all lands north of Lubbock TX are covered in meters of deep snow from Thanksgiving til Easter.
Reality doesn’t support that? Much of the Great Plains, while cold, does not have deep snow?
Anyway, I’d wondered how railroads cleared the tracks of accumulated snow and ice.
Here, locomotives, giant plow blades, and a display of raw power.
I assume this is most common east of the Mississippi River and north of the Mason Dixon Line? Maybe the “Lake Effect” region?
ralph appreciates the folks who video these type things, and those who compile clips, cause it lets me see “reality”.
And, the tech (digital cameras, storage, and of course, the WWW) and the companies that make it possible.
Is this on topic since RRs are so important to macro n micro economics?
Keeping rail routes through the mountains open in winter was a major issue when the Transcontinental RR (now Union Pacific) was built from Omaha to San Francisco. They resolved the problem mostly with snow sheds. And powerful snow blowers.
In the midwest winter snow is not usually a problem. In St. Louis we expect two or three snows per year. Most an inch or two that melts in a few days. Easy for trains with plows to deal with. The bigger problem is switches that get jammed with ice and need to be heated to thaw. But now you see lots of switches with propane tanks to feed those heaters. Probably by remote control. No personnel required.
Thomas Hart Benton was Missouri’s first senator. He strongly favored southern routes to the west coast to minimize the mountain pass problem. Southern Pacific route (on land purchased from Mexico) is probably best. Benton probably favored the route used by Frisco that ultimately became Sante Fe.
This was the age of slavery and southern routes were a problem. Investors were more comfortable with routes through Chicago.
