With the crusty deep snow I had to shovel out the layout! I’m hoping this will promote melting. Here are a couple pics!
The beast is in the cave in the 2nd photo just waiting!!! Sean
Sometimes thats the only way especially if you want to run trains throughout the winter. I just shovled my layout yesterday before thisnext round of snow and freezing rain.
My grandfather used to tell stories about working MoW on the “Bums and Outlaws” in the '50s. After a big snow they’d call in the maintenance guys from the whole division to go shovel out the yards a couple at at time. Try to picture it: 100-150 guys with regular flat shovels putting the snow into gons by hand. Then the yard switcher pushing the gons one by one into the river to let the snow float out… over and over and over and over…
I just finished reading Vis Major, by Martin Burwash, about the 1910 Wellington Disaster on the Great Northen, where two trains were wiped out by an avalanche at Wellington, WA, at the top of Steven’s Pass. A historical novel, it’s a great read, and I highly recommend it.
In it, it describes guys working for 20 cents an hour, shoveling snow down to the level of the top of the rotary plows, so the plows could do the rest of the work.
As a result of that disaster, the GN decided to build the 7.6 or so mile tunnel lower down on the pass. They changed the name of Wellington to Tye, to try to erase the memory of that slide.
Steve Featherkile said:
I just finished reading [url=http://www.amazon.com/Vis-Major-Railroad-God-White-Wellington/dp/1440161771][u]Vis Major[/u][/url], by Martin Burwash, about the 1910 Wellington Disaster on the Great Northen, where two trains were wiped out by an avalanche at Wellington, WA, at the top of Steven's Pass. A historical novel, it's a great read, and I highly recommend it.In it, it describes guys working for 20 cents an hour, shoveling snow down to the level of the top of the rotary plows, so the plows could do the rest of the work.
As a result of that disaster, the GN decided to build the 7.6 or so mile tunnel lower down on the pass. They changed the name of Wellington to Tye, to try to erase the memory of that slide.
So I guess can say hand shaveling my line is somewhat prototypical.
Absolutely. It’s just that our shovels are just a bit out of scale.
Shovel, or no, I have no hope of clearing any track until we have a prolonged warm spell. Much of my track is in the drip line from the house roof. I now have thick blocks of ice encasing the track in many spots 