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Great video! I love the fact that the rotaries, the Jordan spreaders, and the F7Bs are still tagged as "SPMW." Otherwise it looked like a relatively nice day on The Hill.
I can remember in the late 60's going up to lake Tahoe in the winter and seeing the rotaries and flanges working. You could get close to them at Colfax.
I had one of these for my driveway, had to get rid of it as storage was a bitch. Never ceases to amaze me the technology man comes up with to make things easier for us. Kudos!
Awesome Footage of the Ex SP Rotaries on Donner Pass And I remember seeing the SP on Donner Pass in the 1990s as a Kid with my late Dad Steve Schmollinger 😁😁😁😁🙂🙂💯💯👍👍👍👍
i have enjoyed watching the track being cleared, i am from MN and this year as of this date 3-12-23 we had had 80" of snow so far, i know it is nothing like Donner Pass.
The first time I saw snow it other cities along I-80 in the Western Region of the US. I had always thought the snow levels like what Donner Pass gets was the norm for everywhere else and it surprised me that it wasn't like that everywhere.
Thanks for the good side views of these machines. I was surprised at just how "short" they are - less than an F7B and the wheelbase is about that of an old caboose!
Ghosts of the Donner Party watching like “these folks of the future need /mining equipment/ to deal with all the damn snow here over a century and a half later? That checks out.”
This isn't unusual. SP thought of getting rid of the rotaries but changed their minds when there was nothing capable of doing the amount of work these behemoths do. They are the reason Donner stays open year round for rail traffic. The Jordan Spreader just wouldn't be able to keep up with 38 - 50 feet of water heavy snow. Think about this... One pound of snow in the Midwest might have 1 inch of water content. Sierra snow has 10x that because of the orographic lift effect and the moisture laiden storms that hit it. It has many times been referred to as Sierra Cement. When it solidifies due to thaw and freeze cycles it sets like cement and it will be late summer before a full thaw will occur.
Lots of great EMD power including the prime movers in the rotary. I believe that the UP rotary is a converted F7B. To bad that they aren't using the older inverted triad horns. Ya ever notice how when the project is mission critical the Class 1's Always use EMD instead of GE Junkamotives?
Ex OTR driver here how did we know Donner was getting hammered. Whenever we heard SP and later UP was getting the Rotaries ready to keep the freaking tracks open. We knew that CHP would be going full iron requirements to get over the summit and also get the emergency kits ready just in case they shut down the road over the summit.
As best I can recall, when I moved to Roseville in 1978, at least one of the rotaries was still steam powered. I think there were four of them all parked together just east of the maintenance building.
I Understand Rotary Snow Plow Is Not Sel Propelled Hence Requiring LocomotivesTo Push And Puil Them But I Also Understand The Blades Movement And Electricity Are Obtained From An FB Unit As Power Supply Since Rotaries Were Time Ago Originally Steam Operated
Wondering why you stopped filming at 0:53 just when the rotary was getting into some good cutting? Rotaries on Donner pass just moving up and down cleared tracks. whoopie.
What is the magic ingredient to moving show? Horsepower and lots of it, horsepower up front, horsepower in the middle, and horsepower bringing up the rear. These wonderful machines get to pass the time sitting still, but when they need to move a massive amount of snow, they are in league of their own. Just thinking, the absolute best horsepower in the middle would be 6936. Now that would be a picture for the ages.
For years, the Southern Pacific used a pair of SD-9's to push a pair of rotaries, then upgraded to newer 6-axle power as they came along. SD-45T's would have been used up until the last years of the SP. A pair of 6-axle units is used for maximum adhesion to push rotaries and spreaders. In contrast, only a pair of ice-breaker equipped GP-38's are used on the flanger sets.
Normal practice: flangers run first & often to keep trains moving over the hill. Spreader sets clear any drifts piled up between parallel tracks and to keep the ROW open on both sides. The UP also has Pisten Bully tracked snowplows (also used to groom slopes at ski resorts.) These pieces of equipment are enough to keep the hill open most winters. When the snow depth exceeds what spreaders can push or if any slides bury the tracks then the UP will send out the rotaries. They are the last resort before the hill is shut down. The UP has balloon tracks to turn the flangers and rotaries (if single-ended) at Truckee and Blue Canyon, and a wye at Colfax.
I was told once that it was to keep the center of gravity as low as possible to keep it from “driving over the snow” - keeps them planted firmly. Now is that true? No idea. Just passing it along for the sake of discussion
It's interesting that UP never bothered to repaint the rotaries to UP standards for MOW equipment. I'll bet they bought into all the nonsense that we'll never see deep snow again!
They are spinning g discs that give clear vision. Developed for use on ships but fitted to the set of GP38-2's that work out of Roseville. The snow just gets thrown off so the engineers get a clear view.
Glad to be of help. They also fit the roof mounted icicle breakers and grills over the cab windows.if you ever visit Roseville there are usually some of them parked outside the depot near the rosaries.
this is actually nothing, this is from a rotary training run in early february theres a bit more snow now, they just had normal rotary run the other day and last monday
