Wendell, as for shorting out the rails, years ago I was running my Aristo Pacific, with a string of 4 streamline coaches, lighted coaches, when a sudden rain shower sprang up. The train ran fine on the wet rails back to the porch, but when I lifted the coaches off the rails, all of the silver coloured plating was gone from the wheel treads.
@Greg - Empty plow car weighs 2 pounds. Ballast alone weighs a few ounces over 5 pounds; so all together just over 7 pounds.
Daktah John said:
@Greg - Empty plow car weighs 2 pounds. Ballast alone weighs a few ounces over 5 pounds; so all together just over 7 pounds.
That’s what I got, 7.25 lbs total.
Yeah, I would not reduce weight, but you can experiment for free. I’d leave the weight and doublehead the locos.
Greg
My wooden plow has a good chunk of lead in it which seems quite useful for keeping it on the rails. I have experimented with additional weight on the loco too and that seems to help traction.
I think the Dora power unit isfairly light for traction, but I was fortunate that the conditions of the rails were right. I added bruches to clean the railhead and flangeways of snow. I do think that also helped. It is not always possible to remove all the snow from the railhead prior to a wheel rolling over it, but I think it may help.
Adding weight to the plow is needed in order to get around the curves.
My gondola Aristo plow would go straight on curves if not weighted esp on the heavy wet snow we get.
BTW, Sean cheats as he built a great blower to clear the tracks and then a plow to widen the path!!
Weight is needed for sure in the plow. I would think the 7 # range should surfice for most plowing. Once the snow gets to heavy or deep you will have issues. One being no traction even with several locos and two you will derail the plow. Even in the real world a plow will derail no matter how heavy it is. It’s called trying to move more snow than what the plow was intended for. Later RJD
I think the real problem is that we are attempting to plow 1:1 snow with a 1:20, 22, 24, 29, 32 plow. In most cases, the snow is going to win. It takes a special set of circumstances to do otherwise (1-2 inches max of dry powder being the best).
If you want to plow with a rotary, you will still need the same dry powder snow, but you might be able to plow 3 inches of snow. Remember, 3 inches is close to 6 scale feet of snow. That’s a lot, I don’t care who you are. 
With a blade plow, speed is probably your friend, with a rotary, not so much. If you look at videos of a rotary at work, they just crawl along. I’ve seen grass grow faster.
It’s way too cold outside to test anything, and most of last weeks snow on the elevated roadbed portion has tuned to ice around the ties making it impossible for the wheels to track. But I did do some testing on the indoor layout…
My newest plow (the red blade) was derailing the front truck a lot, so I pulled it to measure the back-to-back. It was very tight so I opened it up to about 1.570 and ran it around the spots it derailed previously with no weight in the gondola. It tracked well forward and backward. Added all of the weight back in and tested again - Derails at the problem spots 
Removed about 1 pound of the weight and tried again. Tracks 100%. My theory is that the weight was bottoming out the springs killing the equalization. By getting the springs out of full compression the truck is more tollerant of my crappy track!
Maybe come March things will soften up enough to give it a test outdoors.
Some of the Rotary plow builds that I have seen have used an impeller from a vacuum cleaner as the blade of their plow. I have noticed that they just don’t work well, in anything other than dry powder snow.
Take a look at the photos below, they may explain why the impeller just doesn’t cut it, or, rather, doesn’t cut the snow. These blades will actually chew the snow, where the impeller only trys to throw the snow. The snow has to be chewed up, before it can be tossed.
(http://www.largescalecentral.com/public/album_photo/60/d0/01/1cd91_8dfd.jpg)
(http://www.largescalecentral.com/public/album_photo/64/d0/01/1cd95_f6ae.jpg)
All photos from the Great Northern Railway Society Archives, fair use for education.
My Aristo plow seems to de-rail easy and it’s hard to get that front truck back on the track with the blade in the way.
That is a common problem…the plow needs sides to keep the snow from just settling back onto the tracks between the wheels. Those same sides make it hard to get the wheels on the rails. My plow’s sides extend all the way back. That is why I put all the weight in it so that I do not have to rerail it very often.
Steve Featherkile said:
Some of the Rotary plow builds that I have seen have used an impeller from a vacuum cleaner as the blade of their plow. I have noticed that they just don’t work well, in anything other than dry powder snow.
Take a look at the photos below, they may explain why the impeller just doesn’t cut it, or, rather, doesn’t cut the snow. These blades will actually chew the snow, where the impeller only trys to throw the snow. The snow has to be chewed up, before it can be tossed.
(http://www.largescalecentral.com/public/album_photo/60/d0/01/1cd91_8dfd.jpg)
(http://www.largescalecentral.com/public/album_photo/64/d0/01/1cd95_f6ae.jpg)
All photos from the Great Northern Railway Society Archives, fair use for education.
Steve we do this for FUN!
I made my rotary to see if I could and how hard would it be…
I use a large wing nut to try to brake up the snow … but I’m having fun trying …
Funny …my Rotary kind of looks like that but in black!
It does throw snow out and away from snow banks made by my plow!
The PAZ only has a push plow; however, with this amount of snow - operations are shut-down!
I agree the right kind of snow is very important. Weight in the plow gondola is also important. I use a brick. Good traction is key. Ice on the tracks is not good and I think battery RC is the way to go. I have used up to 3 USAT engines to push my plow and rotary but even after hours of acclimating to the cold it seems it is only a matter of time before ice starts to form and slippage occurs.
If you have tight curves the train might catch on the snow bank where the plow missed.
Daktah John does your plow have metal wheels? Those help. Don’t be afraid to really blast those drifts at beyond proto speeds.
In the past I have cleared the heavy stuff with a small shovel and left enough to have some fun.
(http://freightsheds.largescalecentral.com/users/capecodtodd/_forumfiles/WinterCut21813.jpg)
Of course if the wedge doesn’t cut it a Rotary like the one Sean built will work nicely but a precutter is important. I tried a big wing nut on mine but also cut a piece of angle iron and that works very well.
Here is a video of it in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjBkyWlQ6hI
Todd - Yes, Metal wheels with ball bearings to handle the weight.