Rotary snowplow

White Pass and Yukon Rotary Snow Plow No. 1 is an example of a Rotary snowplow.

The Rotary Snowplow is a piece of railroad snow removal equipment with a large circular set of blades on its front end that rotate to cut through the snow on the track ahead of it. When snow is too deep, the railroads call on their rotary. The precursor to the rotary snowplow was the wedge snowplow.

The rotary was invented in Toronto, Canada, by dentist J.W. Elliot in 1869. He never built a working model or prototype, although he wanted to.

Early rotaries had steam engines inside their car bodies to power the blades; a few are still in working order, and in particular one on the White Pass & Yukon Route in Alaska performs annual demonstration runs through thick snow for the benefit of photographers and railway enthusiasts.

Today they are still around while they preserved in museums some that are static displays, and some into operational condition.

Trivia

• The Rotary Snowplow also have Auxiliary water tender to help the snowplow to carry extra water but without an auxiliary car, the plow could only carry enough water to operate three hours.
• The D&RGW sometimes had to couple as many as seven steam locomotives to the rear of its snowplows to tackle heavy falls.

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