PLOW TRAINS RUN ON THE RIO GRANDE GARDEN RAILWAY

 Believe it or not, we actually ran three trains during the afternoon of the 29^th.  With the help of Silo’s arranging to have AT&SF Aristo wedge plow from Trinidad on hand and “ with no human intervention”, we plowed out the Rio Grande Garden Railway for limited operations.  We first plowed the preceding nights 4 to 6 scale feet of snow off the Butterfly Loop using my 4 LGB centennial transparent F-7’s now with one motor block added to each “B” unit (for a total of 6 motors) and 3 RGGR work cars behind. After several trips around the loop a train of 8 freight cars followed RGGR’s trusty ex-Sumpter Valley #250 2-6-6-2 behind the plow train keeping the line clear.  We had a few problems with snow getting under the pilot and causing the pony truck to derail throughout the afternoon. We need to build a plow attachment for #250 like the D&RGW K’s sported.

The plow train moved over to the return loop and cleared it before moving on to the main loop.  An iced switch derailed the plow on its first pass over to the main at BG interlocking but crews quickly took care of that problem.  The main was cleared in time for the AT&SF “Chief” to make its 2:00PM trip and the plow train returned to keeping the return loop open for the “Chief’s” 4:00 PM return trip to the shop.  Heavy snow caused one major derailment of the rear vista dome on the Chief as it exited “Kissin’ Rocks tunnel around 3:30 PM resulting a delay and passengers missing connections later on down the line.

All trains returned to the shops by 4:00 PM and operations for the River of Lights  special lighted trains for the evening was canceled as were operations the next day.  Sunday operations were expected to return to normal after the snow stopped and plow operations followed.   What we needed was scale size people and some of NMGRR members die cast “bulldozers” to help with the cleanup.

“It was a very exciting time and it gave me great pleasure to watch it all happen. I just stood back and watched the train and plow do its job through the undisturbed snow.  Not a human footprint in sight!!!!   I wish I had video to show. A park visitor from Michigan shot some stills of the first plow run out on the “Butterfly” and said they would e-mail them to me when they get back home after the New Year begins.  I’ll send them on to the newsletter Editor if I get them.”

Luxford, Superintendent of Operations, Rio Grande Garden Railways, Albuquerque Botanical Gardens