Western Railroad Discussion > What does a Flanger do ?

Weve all seem the pictures of the UP and SP Units that go over donner pass with the flange on top of them....what purpose does that flange serve?

you talking about ice breakers...

The purpose of a flanger is to clear ice and snow and other obstacles that are located BETWEEN the rails.

In railroad practice over Donner, SP (and now UP) operate flanger trains composed of a locomotive or two and a couple of specially equipped cars (called flangers) with these flanger plows mounted underneath. The flanger plow is lowered into position when plowing, and can be raised to clear fixed objects (such as grade crossings, switches, etc) as needed.

See here for photos and additional info on SP flangers:
http://espee.railfan.net/flangers.html

The assemblies on the roof of the locomotives often found on these "flanger trains" are icicle breakers, and that seems to be what you are referring to. Icicles often form inside tunnels and leaky snowsheds during the wintertime on Donner. Depending upon their size, icicles pose a hazard/nuisance to passing trains.

For this purpose, SP equipped some of their SD9s, SD9Es and GP38-2s with icicle breaker assemblies. Each of these icicle breaker assemblies could be positioned upward as needed during the wintertime, or can be used to even clear out low hanging tree branches, as seen on the Santa Cruz Branch a couple of years ago.

See the link below for a better view of these icicle breaker assemblies:
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,164827,164827#msg-164827

Best Regards,
Harry

J_deBroux Wrote:
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> Weve all seem the pictures of the UP and SP Units
> that go over donner pass with the flange on top of
> them....what purpose does that flange serve?


Flanger cars do not have anything on top. Perhaps you are talking about the frame-like assembly mounted on the top of locomotives assigned to Donner Pass MOW service. These are Icicle breaker bars designed to break off dangerous ice that forms in the tops of tunnels on the pass. Canadian Pacific uses flatcars with a similar design on trains carrying new autos through the tunnels on the North Shore of Lake Superior for the same reason.

Flangers have a steel flag on top of the cab to show which plow is up or down. They are connected by rods to the air cylinders inside the flanger. The air culinder pulls the blade up and down. The flanger blade is "Chained" where the chain will snap if it hits something like a grade crossing, switch, etc. Thats why there are welders carried in the cabin but nobody in their right mind would ride in there. They derail a lot. The trucks are pretty stiff. Usually they go in the ditch at 40 something and its an "E" ticket ride.

The blades are controled by the engineer with a special plug that plugs in on the wall of the cab and then thru the MU cable. On the box it says Left or Right & Up and Down.

It plows the snow from between the rails so it doesn't build up and start catching air hoses or better yet, it doesn't get high enough to have the fuel tanks start sliding, hence no brakes.

Some of the engines for snow service had Ice Breakers mounted on the cab of the engine that were hinged up and then bolted into position. The broke hanging ice off the roof of the tunnels so they would not damage trailing equipment such as passenger cars, auto racks, etc.



Nudge

Thanks all that totally answered all my questions....thanks to all the contributed it is greatly appreciated!

J_deBroux Wrote:
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> Thanks all that totally answered all my
> questions....thanks to all the contributed it is
> greatly appreciated!


Further thought to add to this discussion of flangers.

At nearly every grade crossing or mainline turnout in the parts of the country where track may get covered by snow sufficiently to make it difficult for the engineer to know exactly where the crossing or turnout is located, there are flanger signs on each side about 100 feet in advance of the obstruction.

Commonly, this is simply a steel pole about 10 feet tall with a 4" x 12" rectangular plate riveted or welded to the top, and painted black, to be most easily seen against a white background. The exact configuration will be described in the Employees Timetable Special Instruction. My favorite were the ones used by the old Chicago Great Western, which was a 5 pointed star about 15 inches across.

In areas where wing plows are used along with flangers, a variation of the rectagular flanger sign may be used to warn the operator to draw the wings in where clearance might be close. Around here, CN uses a plate the same as the rectangular sign, except it is painted orange, and it is riveted off center to the left or right of the post, to indicate which side has the close clearance for the wing plow.

http://members.trainorders.com/nova55/flan.jpg

Theres a flanger board. SPs were red.

Flangers are the only piece of equipment that a crew called out of Roseville could return to Roseville in 10 hours of service and with the help of a Trainmaster with 5 days pay.