A rotary plough has no powers of self-propulsion, but the mighty engine within her heart, driving the shaft of her great cutting-wheel has the power of three locomotives. That cutting-wheel approximates the width of a single-track in diameter. It will bore into a solidly packed drift, twelve or sixteen feet in height, suck in a great volume of snow, and then throw it—as a fire engine throws water—through a nozzle 60 to 100 feet to the right or left of the line. The nozzle is close to three feet in diameter, and the stream that it throws will bury a small barn. The man who sits in the lookout of the rotary controls the nozzle, changes it from side to side so as to avoid buildings.
These rotaries are giants. Where the great flange or wing ploughs—the ordinary snow-fighting artillery of a railroad—fail, they come into service. Theirs is ever a mighty task to perform. We have seen a rotary spend sixty minutes in going sixty feet through a heavy drift, a drift three miles long and twenty deep. Snow can drift, and wet snow can pack, pack until you almost begin to think of dynamite as a resource.
Three days of such snow-fighting would completely weary the ordinary man. Up in the snow-belts, they are likely to get a hard storm every week from December to March, and that atop of the heaviest traffic of the year. It is the sort of fighting that marks the fine-grained timber of a man; that sends him down to headquarters in some metropolitan city along the seaboard, to fight the weightier battles of traffic and of operation, which are unending within and between the mighty railroads of America.
Sometimes the battle to keep the line open is fought close to a busy terminal. Here, before you, once again, is the division superintendent of one of the great lines entering Jersey City. Let him tell you of the nasty storm on Christmas night last, a storm that laid low all street transportation in every city along the North Atlantic seaboard. He will tell you how it was the first Christmas that he had spent with his family in seven years; the first holiday in three. He lives in a little suburban city within the 20-mile radius of New York City Hall, and in his bedroom a telegraph sounder, connected with the division’s main wire, clicks in the early morning and late at night.
Over that wire on Christmas night last, the superintendent gave orders. There was snow in the air at dusk when they finished their late afternoon dinner; by eight o’clock he had ordered the flanges (ploughs) on all his regular road engines. Along the entire line orders had gone to keep a sharp lookout for trouble. The superintendent turned into bed at ten o’clock, hoping for a clear winter’s sky in the morning.
He turned into bed but not into sleep. He had cut out his telegraph wire for the night but a telephone message from the agent down at the depot in the suburban city made him sit up wide awake. The storm was gaining. They were beginning to get trouble reports down at headquarters. The superintendent turned out of bed and began dressing. He cut in on the telegraph wire and began giving orders.
He caught his train-master at the neighboring town and told him to meet him at 495, the last train into Jersey City that evening. He turned from the telegraph to the telephone and ordered the local livery man to get up to his house and take him down to the 11:42. He called the depot agent to hold that 11:42 until he arrived.
“Winter days when the wind-blown snow forms mountains upon the tracks”
