How Does America's Most Scenic Railroad Plow Snow? Flangers On the Durango & Silverton

Ever wonder how America's Most Scenic Railroad (as voted by USA Today website visitors) keeps its tracks clear of snow? Well wonder no more. Join me as we chase two separate extra trains on Colorado's Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad to clear the tracks of snow. You may have already have seen a lot of this footage as I've used in "Through the Snow, Not Around It", "Yukon South", and "Winter 2021 On The Durango and Silverton" (footage from the latter didn't make it to the 'Yukon South' video due to the footage being lost on the wrong side of the Animas Canyon, no literally, the footage was literally 'iced' from January to April of 2021). But now, we combine the footage from all three of those to create a cohesive video with narration telling you about how these special vehicles plow the rails of this ex-Denver and Rio Grande Western branch. The car, a specially made car carves a path between the rails to allow flanges of wheel stay on the rails as ice and snow build up can cause a derailment. In addition to the flange cleaning, these cars feature an additional plow that that flings snow further from the tracks. While not as impressive as a rotary snow plow that you could catch on a locale such as Southern Pacific's Donner Pass (fine, Union Pacific... ugh) or the Cumbres and Toltec with it's Rotary OY. It's not as impressive as the others, but Flanger OF gets the job done and is overall a lot easier for the railroad to use in conjunction with its plows attached to locomotives.

So join us as we hit the slopes in Vail, no... Aspen? No... Telluride? No? Purgatory? Close, we'll be down in the canyon far below it, but same area! Are we skiing? NO, good luck getting me on that after an accident as a kid, but snowboard? Tried it, two weeks later the whole world closed up, so that is a no-go... Ski-bob (ski bob, ski-bob?) perhaps, but not here. Way too rough, and I should probably learn to use the snow shoes I've purchased since then, as James from SteamTrainVideos.com (Steam Train Videos) was also filming on the same day as the steam scenes, and since he's so light compared to me, he was able to get high above Elbert Creek while I just gave up at the bottom of the hill as I sunk deeper and deeper into the snow.

Anyways, if you've read this far, Keep a lookout for that far away distant signal and even a sighting of Jerry Day... as we go from Durango's YardLimit to Rockwood's Yard Limit and chase after these historic pieces of equipment such as the ALCO/ Montreal Locomotive Works' DL535 locomotive that now call these rails home (are they snowbirds if they're still in the snow?)