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Caption: Something rarely seen. Only four of these double-ended snowplows were ever built for CN. Transcona Shop in Winnipeg constructed them back in 1939. They were numbered 55696 to 55699. The purpose of this design was for snow clearing on branchlines where there was no place to turn the train, so the power just ran around the plow and the snow clearing equipment just headed back the way it came. I'm not sure where they were stationed, but a good bet would be on Prince Edward Island, where I found this one in a storage line at Charlottetown. It was the last survivor, and eventually ended up at the Salem and Hillsborough Railroad (SHRR) in Hillsborough New Brunswick, where it received some restoration and was repainted and lettered "S&H".
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This is gnarly looking. Why the colour? i’ve never seen a brown plow before…
I wish I knew. It was repainted into the regular CN colour when it went to the SHRR in NB. I’ve only seen a photo of one other, and that was the 55699 and it was in the standard CN paint assigned to the plows.
Brown was standard for plows until the Sixties re-branding. I’m guessing it hadn’t been repainted for quite some time.
Thanks, Jeremy. I guess the “windows” give us a bit of a clue as well.
Thank you gang. Love learning things on the comment sections
AK. 10 67. stenciled on the side of the plow would indicate it was last shopped on CN’s Atlantic Region in October of 1967. I have a photo of a CN double ended plow in orange paint that I snapped in Moncton, NB in August of 1979. It had been shopped in November 1966 (AK. 11.66.) and received the CN Orange No.12 paint (Work Equipment orange). I’ll see if I can make the photo presentable enough for everyone to see.
Keep those Work Equipment photos coming!