January 27, 2015
What with all the consternation today on cable TV about the severity of the
blizzard that just smacked New York City and Boston, here's an image (both
inserted and attached) of an unidentified CB&Q Class M-2 or M-2-A (or even,
perhaps, an O-3) being dug out with shovels after having stalled while "bucking"
through a snow drift. Now, this snow event was a genuinely SEVERE
blizzard:
The image is both unidentified and undated, but I'd speculate the location
is somewhere on Lines West during the Great Blizzard of January 1949 that
paralyzed the States of Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas for weeks. If the
locomotive's Pyle National "winged" headlight looks just a little odd with
"white number boards," that's because it's packed full of snow.
Evidentially, the M or O Class locomotive hit the last drift before it
stalled with enough force to have the snow knock out the headlight glass,
reflector and side boards. What a miserable job it must've been to shovel
out this locomotive in below zero temperatures to clear the mainline.
Makes me cold just to look at this image. Best Regards - Louis
Louis Zadnichek II
Fairhope, AL
