Nostalgia & History > Strolling Down Switch Heater Memory Lane

I remember seeing these unique infared switch heaters at Canyon Diablo, AZ back in the late 1970s. The road leading into there from I-40 was a glorified cow path!

Does anyone else remember seeing these? Are they still in use?

Did / Does anyone else use them besides Santa Fe / BNSF?



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/14 14:29 by CA_Sou_MA_Agent.

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yep, saw them at williams jct. thanks for the kool post!

58 years i never saw that contraption before ... yeah thankX for the post

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I guess the design wasn't that hot...

let's remember high school physics, heat rises... dave, out.

I saw them at Canyon Diablo and Williams Jct. They seemed to work well enough.

Heat does not rise, hot air rises. An infrared heater heats through electromagnetic radiation, and the long wave radiation will heat objects such as the track and ballast, not the air.

Here is a shot of one at Canyon Diablo in 1987.

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My experience with switch heaters was melting snow and ice off switches and retarders at the Indiana Harbor Belt Blue Island hump yard in sub-zero weather in the early 1970s, using a flame-producing device comprised of a long pipe fed by an air line and a kerosene line. Did the trick.

They are in place throughout the upper Feather River Canyon on the WP/UP. Matter of fact, the one at Sloat was recently rebuilt. The photo shows the picture I took in April 2010 at the east switch at Sloat. It's heated with propane in a tank off to my left and piped here to the switch. It must be used, but probably hasn't had much use the last three years!

Lee Hower - Sacramento

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Switch heaters that are right alongside the rail are quite common, especially in cold climates.

The thing that's unique about the Santa Fe applications in Arizona are the heaters being placed high above the track and transmitting the heat straight down onto the track structure.

A mention was made earlier about a switch heater, similar to the ATSF application(s) in Arizona, also being in Feather River Canyon. Is that truly the case or are they just "standard" switch heaters that are right alongside the rails, as shown in the photo?

These ATSF-Arizona-overhead-infared things were installed before double-stack trains started running. I wonder how much clearance there is between the heater and the top of a container. If a double-stack train had a UDE right underneath one of those things, it could get quite interesting. You'd have some "hot" merchandise!