some snow plows durning the storms back in January Dial up warning

[rtraincollector]

this is an email foward to me so here it is with the pics

As you all know, eastern Colorado and western Kansas has been hit hard
by
holiday season snow storms. All of a sudden, snow plows started to
appear
here and there, and that always gets us going. Early New Year's Day,
Mike
Danneman, John Charles and I headed east in John's big diesel truck. We
only
had an approximate idea where UP's Cheyenne rotary was working (on the
KP,
UP's Limon Sub), but we didn't know how we could get there. The
interstate
was the only road officially open and we needed so use some state
highways
to see the plow. We drove to Goodland, Kansas, and headed south on
Kansas
27, which was marked closed. We kept going for 30 miles until we
reached
Sharon Springs, a UP crew change point. They had just gotten 32 inches
of
snow and all roads into town were officially closed. The town was a
mess
with huge drifts in the middle of the streets. (We learned that closed
highways do not necessarily mean impassible highways.)

From Sharon Springs, we headed west on US 40, which was also closed,
and met
the rotary about noon just east of the Kansas-Colorado border at
Weskan,
Kansas. We chased it until dark and left it west of Wallace, Kansas.
The UP
rotary was going to Oakley, Kansas, where it would quit and head back
west.
All of this was to take place at night, so we drove back to Goodland
for the
night. We had heard that the Kyle would be running wedge plow out of
Goodland the next morning so we thought we'd try for that. Early
yesterday,
Jan 2, we were waiting for something to happen at Goodland when we
learned
that the plow was actually westbound coming out of Colby, Kansas, about
30
miles east. We hightailed it east and met the plow just west of Colby
and
followed it west to Goodland. Wow! It really put on a show for us. At
Goodland they messed around for awhile digging out switches and picking
up
another unit, and then headed west. The snow show was wonderful until
they
got to Kanorado on the Kansas-Colorado border.

Kyle's assistant general manger and lots of MofW folks were following
the
plow on the highway. The AGM was constantly telling the engineer where
there
drifts were and generally what to expect as the engineer had very
limited
visibility. Just west of Kanorado we heard the AGM yell over the radio:

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! (He must have been from Texas.) The train was
right
behind us and we looked back just in time to  see the plow derail in a
huge
plume of snow. It was 12:15 p.m., and that was the end of the show. We
stayed around for an hour or so and headed back to Denver. The plow
apparently derailed at a road crossing and took the first two units
with it.
The third until remained on the rails. The MofW people were
leapfrogging the
train clearing the crossings and making sure they were safe. I guess
they
may have missed one.

Here are some photos from the last two days. It was quite a way to
start the
new year, wasn't it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RUT-RHO

 

[Anonymous]

RT - Thanks for sharing these - What a beautiful sight!  Blue skies, lots of snow...loved the one with the horses watching!  Wonder how long it took them to get that mess cleaned up!??!

Lisa

[laz 57]

RT,

  COOL, THANKS for sharing.

laz57

[dbaker48]

RT - Really great pictures, thanks for posting !! 

[csxt30]

Those are real nice pictures RT !! I really like that rotary on the engine !!

Thanks, John

[darianj]

Kewl shots!  Thanks for sharing.