Ah, yes….. summer and even fall has taken the “last bus” south to warmer places. For those of you that live in the “Great North Land” as I do, we find the winter months the perfect time to work on those hobby projects that just never get done the rest of the year. I have just the project for those long winter nights!

Every fall, my lovely wife and I take the yearly pilgrimage south to a small farming community called Wells, Minnesota. Most years I help “Cousin Ted” with the harvest of corn and soy beans, but not this year. It was just to cold and wet! With lots of time on my hands I did a bit of exploring around the area.

Wells used to have many meat and food processing and packing plants in the area. Those days are long gone, and so are the plants, except for one that is in the process of being brought down. Being basically always on the look out for modeling prospects, I thought I would have a look around. This had been a large plant, and even had it’s very own long railroad siding. Poking around this abandoned siding, what do I run across but a wonderful Wedge Snow Plow that has long been forgotten! What a find!!

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This snow plow looks to have been a very nice “homemade” job from an old steam engine tender.

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At looking around this unit, it had the “feel” that someone had just forgotten where it was stored. The running gear, breaks, and even the paint job all looked good; almost “ready to run”. It even appears to have a useable light on the front. The only problem…. No apparent way of getting this plow out of the abandoned rail siding!

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A very odd aspect of this “remake” from a tender into a snow plow were the truck sets. One truck set had the standard modern roller bearings and springs. (Probably not what originally came on the unit)

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The other truck set also had roller bearings, but they had removed the springs and replaced them with blocks of wood!! You would think the original weight of the tender (when full) would have been more than the reworked plow is now. The only thing I can think of is when they modernized the unit and replaced the truck sets, they just didn’t have any extra truck sets with strong enough springs laying around. Sometimes you need to use what you have!

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All things considered, this looks to be a fine winter project to model. I’m uncertain if I will get to it this year, but I wanted to share it with the rest of you. Remember, the NMRA 2005 convention is not far away, and I would love to see this snow plow come to life as a model.