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[Anonymous]

Greetings everyone,

I am actually designing a snowblower for railroads. In case the machine has to turn around, it must have a built-in turntable able to lift the vehicle so it's possible to turn it around then put it back down on the track.

I've been looking for a while now for such a "lifting turntable", in case it would already exist, but still haven't found anything. Did anyone hear about something like that? Is there a train with a built-in turntable already?

Thanks,

chaosways

[Anonymous]

A number of the bigger Fairmont inspection cars had built-in turntables.

[Anonymous]

It's quite nice, but it's not strong enough for a 50000 lbs machine.

chaosways

[Overmod]

Don't Trackmobiles inherently have this capability?

Of course, this wouldn't be too useful if you needed to turn things around when up on an embankment, but I suspect it wouldn't be too difficult to run in reverse to locations where the required 'pad' to turn the chassis around on the road wheels or tracks could be provided.

This would be a whole lot cheaper than trying to arrange for a lifting pivot, side-clearances, etc. to implement the turntable on a conventional rail chassis that fits within loading gauge. You would almost certainly need stabilizing arms and pads, etc. to keep things from rolling over while reversing.

Of course, this begs the question: WHY would you need to do this? The design presupposes something mounted on one car, with self-contained power (which is not what existing railroad 'snowblowers' (they call them 'rotaries') use in practice!) If you did this, just duplicate the blower and chute at each end; it'll be about as cheap as the reversing rigmarole, and a whole lot more flexible. You can probably even arrange some kind of drawbar and coupler to allow towing or pushing from the 'idle' end...

[Anonymous]

Don't RR's usually push a rotary plow with a couple of 6 axle locos? Over the Sierras here in N. Cal. they use 2 plows with 2 SD-40's sandwiched in the middle. I've never seen a self-propelled rotary plow.

[Anonymous]

Actully Morristown and Erie owns this type of bus that is made to run on the tracks and it has a built in turn table under it.

[pedromorgan]

alot of the smaller brittish road/rail vehicles have turntables to help turn round when there are no roads. but again, this would be no good for a smow blower. that we normally do is have 2 snowblowers either side of 2 locos and run it backwards and forwards.

Peter

[Anonymous]

Have you calculated the cost of having to run 2 locos and buy two snowblowers while one self-propelled snowblower able to turn around by itself can do the job? There's quite a difference.

I finally came up with a nice design that should be working fine. You should hear about it as soon as the machine is out of the shop.

chaosways

[Anonymous]

Sounds interesting, I look forward to hearing about it.

[tree68]

I think the Pikes Peak and Manitou (right name?) had a highway-style blower on steel wheels. Only saw one picture, and couldn't see the undercarriage. It was self-contained/self-propelled, though.

Early rotary plows did have self-contained power (steam), but still had to be pushed. Nowadays, they use power from an accompanying loco to turn traction motors coupled to the rotary blade.

The value of a double ended plow is probably minimal, when balanced against the costs of maintaining two sets of machinery. Most running will be in one direction, and it would likely be faster to simply back up and switch to the next track than to turn the plow around. There are usually turning facilities at terminals, and any stub sidings that were headed in the wrong direction could simply be done on the return trip. No different than a Jordan spreader, or even a ballast regulator used for snow removal.