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CPR Magazine Article
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Spring
2004
Canadian Pacific
Railway Employee Communications
Room 500 401-9th Ave S.W. Calgary AB
T2P 4Z4
PLOWING
AHEAD
Dave Jones
The crew does a little clean-up
on the way to plow the yards at Glacier and Rogers.
It takes brute force
and a skillful hand to ensure the trains keep moving when Old Man Winter comes
calling
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Clearing the avalanche at
Illecillewaet. The Laurie shed can be seen behind the
plow.
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It's the 76th outing from Revelstoke, B.C., for Ed Palasz's snow plow crews in the
winter of 2003-2004. It hasn't exactly been the winter from hell, but as
CPR executive vice-president Fred Green recently remarked to the press,
the harsh winter conditions and accompanying line closures have been reminiscent of
"the perfect storm".
Today is like most other February days for track maintenance foreman and plow operator
John Popplewell, snow plow foreman Kevin Thompson and leading track maintainer Rod
Pfeifer, standing in for regular third crew member Roy Gibson who has booked off to
drive his wife to a dentist appointment. Usually they head east on the main line and
this morning is no exception; Ed is sending them to Glacier and Rogers to spread snow
in the two yards.
As track maintenance supervisor for the spectacular, but treacherous Shuswap and
Mountain subdivision, Ed has called more than 1,000 plow trips over the course of his
26-year career with the railway. In a part of the country that routinely
sees annual snowfalls of 50 feet and more, any day can be "snow day", when
he has to come up with a strategy to keep trains running. It's his first priority and
one that kicks in every November 15th when CPR's Winter Plan comes into effect.
By that date, all of the routine planning has been implemented. Workers have been
briefed, equipment is in place, locomotives have been outfitted with winter
add-ons and survival kits, cars of ballast and rip-rap have
been readied.
When service alerts move from level one to two and then three, conditions are
monitored 24 hours a day by the directors of the Network Management Centre in Calgary,
in communication with the affected areas, while the snow-fighting forces
across the system swing into action.
For Ed, when the weather is bleak and avalanches threaten or, worse still, are already
blocking the main line, he has to conduct a risk assessment before sending crews out.
"Most days I can do that myself", he explains, "but under the
exceptional conditions that we sometimes see, I rely on the senior avalanche
technician at Parks Canada. When things are bad, we speak every morning".
On a good day, like today, John is doing a little clean-up along the way
to Glacier, deftly flaring the outside wing of his plow to clear drifts on the
roadbed and quickly retracting it to avoid the many switches, frogs, signals,
electrical boxes, and bridge abutments that hide beneath the blanket of snow.
It takes an intimate knowledge of your territory to avoid doing serious damage to the
property and possibly to yourself. "You make one boo-boo and you're
going to wind up with a set of dentures", John says, alluding to the very real
possibility of a sudden and jarring stop that a moment's inattention could bring on.
The Winter Plan calls for 12 locomotives to be dedicated to plow service at
Revelstoke, Golden, Cranbrook, Medicine Hat, Moose Jaw, Winnipeg, Schreiber, Chapleau,
St. Luc, and Harvey North Dakota, Glenwood Minnesota, and Sutherland Nebraska. Today,
out of Revelstoke, engineman Rod Misuraca and conductor Rob Mellish are in the cab.
Forty-seven plows and 37 spreaders are the chief concern of men like
Kevin who, as a foreman of plows, is in voice contact with engineer Rod this morning
to instruct him on the optimum handling of the locomotive/plow/spreader work unit.
"We must come east toward the summit of the Selkirks 10 times for every time we
go westward", Kevin says, as he keeps one eye on the track and the other pealed
for the mangy old grizzly that his crew has spotted lately hanging out along this
route.
Rod Pfeifer
John Popplewell Kevin
Thompson
Helping out today, Rod Pfeifer adds to the wildlife talk with his story of the moose
that got on the roadbed and slowed their progress for more than five miles. Rod
started with CPR 23 years ago on a section gang. He says working plow duty is
"kind of like playing video games", but he doesn't take the responsibility
lightly. "It can get a little nerve-wracking when the snow is
flying up and hitting the windshield", he explains, calling out oncoming
obstacles to help John out.
"He's doin' all right for a young feller", engineer Rod - known to his
buddies as "Hot Rod" - known to John about the good work Mr. Pfeifer is
doing on the spreader. "Oh, he wrote the book on this thing", John replies
good-naturedly.
And, indeed, Ed has nothing but praise for all of his men. "It takes a long time
to train a crew to be as good as these guys are", he says, "but in many
cases they get it down to a science and they end up doing it better than you once
did".
LOUIS AND HIS BIG, YELLOW "CAT"
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Louis Deschamps.
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Louis Deschamps is somewhat of a legend in the Revelstoke area. The man can operate a
front-end loader like no other. He's the one the maintenance of way
folks come looking for when they need a lot of snow moved in a hurry.
So it was no surprise to find Louis out there on the Mountain subdivision in early
February when an avalanche at Illecillewaet - just west of the Macdonald and
Connaught tunnels - buried 1,300 feet of track under literally tons of the white
stuff.
The main line was shut down for two days and trains backlogged for more than two
weeks.
Coming on the heels of a severe cold snap, a series of derailments and the usual
winter rash of broken rails and pull aparts, it sent our service temporarily spinning
out of control.
Some blockages are more than even a plow can handle; and this was one of them. While
one of the black, shovel-nosed beasts took more than 30 runs at the
slide from one side, Louis worked the front-end loader from the other.
Fortunately, ol' Louis is never more at home than when he's in the cab of his
"Cat".
Track maintenance supervisor Ed Palasz says Louis' only fault is he doesn't know
when to quit. Louis put in 18-hour shifts clearing away that mess.
"I got blisters on my calluses after that one", Louis said.
The worst he's seen in his 45-year career with CPR, though, was in the
winter of 1971-1972, at one of the snowsheds not far from this year's
slide at Illecillewaet.
"The snow came down the mountain, over the shed, across the river and up the
other side", Louis said. "Then it came right back down again and blew
through the vents in the showshed.
For the first three days, I was the only one who could get to it, so I worked on it
by myself. After that, I was getting a little cranky".
Help did finally arrive, but it was more than a week before the main line was
reopened. "I told them they didn't need railway engineers", Louis said.
"What they needed was mining engineers".
This Momentum article is
copyright 2004 by Canadian Pacific Railway and is reprinted here with their
permission. All photographs, logos, and trademarks are the property of the Canadian
Pacific Railway Company.
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