Model Railroading > A Snag in Time!

Here is a tale of caution for you. I once mounted a metal details west plow a bit too low on a SD70M. I thought what the heck, I'll just run it that way. So it went around virtually all the club layout with no issues. A little later on time was growing short on when I needed to leave for work, so I started running fast to get to where I could take the train off the layout. Well that plow found two parallel gaps in the rail and immediately brought the locomotives to a stop. Since the train was in a curve in a hidden part of the layout, the sudden stop caused all the cars to lay to the outside of the curve in a very hard to reach area. And this was 35 car freight train too. I spent the next hour contorting myself to fish out those cars. Not a whole lot of damage, but I just barely made it to work on time (I had called my boss to let him know I might be a tad bit late). Make sure your plow has 0.040" of clearance.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

Always seems to happen like that. The plow didn't short when it caught?

Happens in the real world also. Many years ago when I was with the Southern in New Orleans an inbound train came in with some of the brand new B30-7A locomotives. No problem inbound but when they headed back north they crossed Florida Avenue on a different track. The crossing was adjacent to the entrance to the intermodal yard and thus you had a lot of heavy truck traffic that was braking for the turn into the entrance. This had mounded the asphalt up a little bit above the top of the rails. That was when we found that the plow on the GE was about an inch too low in the center. Flipped up a good chunk of asphalt. A little quick work with the "universal blue flame wrench" and the plow clearance was corrected.

A few people I know put a piece of .005" styrene on the bottom of their metal Details West plows.
Prevents shorts and saves that expensive DCC equipment.