Sleet Cutters

[FM56]

The recent ice storm was big trouble for the South Shore Line. Years ago, the interurbans attached sleet cutters to their trolley shoes and pressed on. Does anyone know if these or similar devices are still in use?

[seppburgh2]

On the Lackawanna, the MUs had two types of collectors: one designed for sleet cutting, the other for all other times. The DL&W used only one pantograph at a time. Growing up about a mile from the M&E line, use to watch the sky on an icy night for that big blue flash when sleet met pantograph. The normal MO during ice storms was to keep one training moving up and down the line after hours to control the icicles.

[Mookie]

From the land of nothing overhead needed to run trains, can someone take a little time and explain sleet cutters.  Yes, I have seen pantographs, just not during icy weather.

[David1005]

St Louis has heated pantograph shoes to address ice on the trolley wire.   

[NKP guy]

   When the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit Lines operated a fleet of PCC cars, the standard method of keeping the overhead free of sleet was simply to run one or two cars all night long (no service between 1 AM and 5 AM) up and down the lines.  This practice seemed to obtain the desired results.

   Frequent service kept the overhead clear during the daytime.

[rcdrye]

Chicago Transit Authority used a second pole with a sleet cutter shoe on overhead equipped lines (Evanston, Skokie, Lake Street) , equipping various retired passenger cars for that service.  Virtually every CTA car has sleet cutter blades on the trucks for cutting sleet on the third rail.  Chicago Aurora and Elgin steel cars had pneumatic controls for the third rail blades. 

[RME]

Mookie

... can someone take a little time and explain sleet cutters.

A sleet cutter is a device that either vibrates or shears ice that has frozen around or under the trolley wire.  One version wasn't a "cutter" at all, but a trolley wheel made intentionally 'bumpy' so it would vibrate the pole to augment knocking off ice.  Other devices replaced the trolley wheel, or bolted around it, providing edges of a material softer than the wire, but hard enough to break off ice.  As one design said in its promotion, "Saves the wire and makes the sleet fly at its coming"

Presumably most of these were used on a 'dummy' or disconnected pole that didn't have high current draw through it (there is a certain heating effect from arcs, but there is also damage to the wire) or were insulated from picking up if attached to a pole while a standard wheel at the end of that pole continued to supply power.

[wanswheel]

https://archive.org/stream/railtransitwinte00lama#page/n0/mode/2up

[Mookie]

And now I know.  Thank you!

[Paul of Covington]

RME

One version wasn't a "cutter" at all, but a trolley wheel made intentionally 'bumpy' so it would vibrate the pole to augment knocking off ice. Other devices replaced the trolley wheel, or bolted around it, providing edges of a material softer than the wire, but hard enough to break off ice.

   SLEET REMOVERS

   This is from STREET RAILWAY EQUIPMENT published by New Orleans Public Service, Inc. in 1928 and reprinted by the Association of Railway Museums in 1984.   These may have seen use in New Orleans every 30 years or so, if ever.