Saturday, February 13, 2010

Today's Train of Thought- High Plains Snow Drifter, Febuary 13 2010


If you stop and think about it, the folks in most parts of the Midwest have to be shaking their heads in bewilderment at the near-hysteria the most recent bout of snowfall was met with in the Mid-Atlantic region. Storms moving in and dumping 3+ feet of snow and causing whiteout conditions are nothing new, and they usually take it in stride.

That's not to say things always go smoothly. In February 2009, Canadian Pacific was having problems with persistent snowdrifts on the North Dakota stretch of its Twin Cities-Portal, ND mainline so much so that it had to reroute some of their snowfighting equipment off of their own line and use lengthy detour over the Dakota, Missouri Valley and Western via the former SOO Line Max branch and DMVW's line to Bismark, ND. Here, railpictures.net contributor Craig Williams caught a Jordan Spreader and snowplow bracketing a quartet of SOO Line, Canadian Pacific and Dakota Missouri Valley & Western locomotives. The Jordan Spreader and grey & orange GP40-2LW belong to the DMVW, while the trailing three GP38-2s (two in the old SOO line red and white and one in Canadian Pacific's 'dual flags' paint scheme) and snowplow are destined for the Canadian Pacific interchange. The colorful consist stands in stark contrast to the white landscape as the consist approaches Max, ND on February 5th, 2009.

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