RGS (and other Colorado RRs) Snowsheds

In the Donner Pass snowsheds thread a comment was made about wishing the RGS snowsheds were still around. Did RGS have that many snowsheds? The only one I can think of in later (post WWI) years was the one at Lizard Head.

I know there were lots of snowsheds on, for example, Marshall Pass on the D&RG early on but that after the rotaries were proven they were gradually allowed to go away, except for the one at the summit, as they burnt down or otherwise decayed. ISTR there were still a few left in the early 1920's but they taken out, because of clearance issues, as the larger engines arrived. Most of the early sheds on the South Park and others seem to have also gone away over time. Mostly remaining at summits and tunnel mouths from what I can see in pictures.

Besides a collapsed snowshed can be a major problem, look at what the one on the Colorado Midland's High Line did to them in '99! "The crew killed their engines and hit out down the track, hopeful to reach Leadville alive, and the cattle froze into masses of congealed damage claims. ... bogged down behind the big cattle dieup." to quote Lucius (although he mistakenly blames a snow slide of "alpine dimensions" for the stock extra being halted.) There was a westbound passenger waiting for the stock extra at Busk, it got snowed in too. Then the rotaries (CM's own and borrowed ones, including a Jull plow), started breaking down. All in all, the line was tied up for 79 days as storm after storm roared through. And it all started with a snowshed collapsing.

More trouble than they were worth it seems, except in certain special cases like the wye at Cumbres or the Snowshed slide on the Silverton Branch, once things more modern than the huge wedge plows were available.

Hank