SNOW PLOW, a machine or implement used to clear snow from roads, tracks and path ways. The simplest form for common high ways consists of boards framed together so as to form a sharp angle, like the letter A in front and spreading out behind to a greater or less width. Being drawn along with the apex in front, the snow is thrown off the boards to the side of the road or path, and thus a free pas sage is opened for traffic. The snow plow in common use on urban street railways consists, roughly, of a heavy car on high trucks; under neath the floor of the car and before or behind each pair of wheels are huge rotary brushes, of cane, wood-fibre, or some stiff material. These brushes are set obliquely across the vack. at right angles to each other, and are about two feet or a yard in diameter. When the car is in motion power is supplied (from the same source as the motive power), and the brushes rotating swiftly sweep the track clear of the snow, which is thrown to either side. This is further removed by means of side drags, or boards obliquely attached to the car and set edge up, on either side, the point of the angle which they make with the body of the car being directed to the front. Snow plows are in common use on the Western and Northern railroads in the United States and Canada. They are of many
different patterns, the machinery for such pur pose being improved and revised every year. They are constructed more or less on the same principle, which comprises pairs of rotary blades obliquely set in a drum casing open at the front end, and driven by horizontal shafts, the other ends of which are connected with machinery in the body of the car, from which the driving power is supplied. Such an engine is coupled to the locomotive, from which it draws the steam necessary for the operation of the plow through connecting pipes. Another locomotive is hitched behind to supply the movinf power, then comes the train of cars, and, in many cases, behind these another locomotive to help in the pushing. By means of such contrivances the railroads have been enabled to operate through severe snowstorms, cutting through drifts which completely bury their tracks and which before the invention of the snow plow necessitated complete suspension of traffic. Snow plows are now in use on practically all railways in cold climates.