Re: Alamosa January 27 1945

John Cole Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Jerry, when you look at the photos of the D&S
> flanger runs, I am wondering what they did with
> the snow they were packing on the hillside side of
> the ledge. You can only pack snow just so tightly
> before it becomes solid, and starts pushing the
> flanger toward the downhill side. How did they
> clear that snow?
John:
The flanger wing does not really extend out that far from the side of the train. If the snow stacked up to a dangerous level, the section crew would have to shovel it out. Flanger OF has wings that extend out further than the standard flagner (OL did the same). These extended wings were manually operated with extension arms of different lengths. They can extend them independently so that the one on the outside could be left at full extension and the one on the hillside retracted.

On Cumbres, they used the Jordan Spreader which has wings that can be extended or retracted independently.

there are cases where flanger and rotary trains actually brought down snow slides by throwing snow up the hill side.

Jerry Day