Kershaw snow plow

Kershaw snow plow

This page was first posted Feb 3, 2008, and it disappeared for a while after some web host was sold.

So I brought it back, after seeing some recent plowing in 2017 where I saw the plows moving but I didn't get a picture of them actually rolling up snow banks.

It was a Sunday morning, 9 am eastbound from Plover, Wis
32 degrees F
They didn't have to go far this morning, the track ends just after the cannery.

Its a Kershaw ballast regulator, set up for Winter snow plowing.
. . . . looks like a snow blower is on the back.
. . . do the rotary chains double as ballast sweeper in the summer,
. . . . without the blower?
(Years later, I saw a cable tv show Alaskan Rails, showing a Kershaw blowing snow.)

. . . the little steel wheels spin on the wet rail
. . . as they push through the snow bank that had been plowed up by the highway trucks. .

. . . . . . . widen out the wings after clearing the street signs.
. . . . . . the woodsy brush springs back up after the blade passes over.

This picture series looks like one big breakthrough, but it's really three pushes.
One to tap it and crack the crust, then back up and check, then get a little more run at it to gain 2 more feet, back up (check for ice / derail / avoid tearing up asphalt?), then ahead again at a few mph.
These are old snow banks, getting crusty hard.

.
Widen the wings and plow again.
Speeds are under 10 mph.

They go to the next road crossing,
while I fight camera trouble in the cold.

I have no picture of them using what I think is a built-in turn table to spin the machine around a half turn and come back.

.
There's snow chunks in the street, to remove on the return trip

I don't know where they went after this, besides back to Plover.
(this is a two mile dead end line to the cannery)

time for me to go home and fix cameras
Back then, Railpictures didn't want these. I suppose some sunny sky would have helped. Photo ID 478165 was rejected from the database. Railroad: Wisconsin Central Locomotive: Kershaw Reason(s) for Rejection: Poor Esthetic Quality: This rejection reason means that the photo is of low esthetic qualities, or is simply not the type of material we are wishing to publish.

. . . . . to My Main Index Page on the TrainWeb site.

pictures taken and this page was first written Jan 31, 2008; reposted 2017