#snowploughs

[feigeroman]

Saturday Movie Night: Snowdrift At Bleath Gill (1955)

On February 24th 1955, while hauling a goods train between Bishop Auckland and Kirkby Stephen, BR Standard 2 #78018 found herself stuck in heavy drifts of snow just below Stainmore Summit. Engines with snowploughs were dispatched to dig her out, but the snow turned out to be so bad that they found themselves stuck. So began five arduous days and nights of digging, ploughing and thawing - compressed for our benefit into just ten minutes, in what has become one of BTF's most iconic productions

[scavengedluxury]

BHÉV snowplough, Cinkota depot, 1932. From the Budapest Municipal Photography Company archive.

[snooziep]

[lomotunes2008]

Someone's grumpy

[putuponpercy]

I bet Thomas has successfully managed to convince Cranky to yeet his snowplough into the ocean at least once

[mysharona1987]

But this headline reads like Jeremy Renner regrets saving his nephew in sad snowplough accident.

Which is not true. It’s the opposite.

But that poor nephew.

His villain origin story.

[shadowsandstarlight]

Local man with chronic pain has just shovelled snow off of entire very large back deck solo. Whole thing was covered in 6 inches to a FOOT of snow. I love Canada. This all showed up literally overnight, by the way, the deck was completely snow-free before yesterday afternoon.

[shyyysstuff]

:/

[misforgotten2]

“Let it snow, let it snow, let it-- **bbrrrrzzzttt** Whoa! I sure hope that wasn’t another cat.”

Our Wonderful World   1969, 1961, 1960, 1959, 1951    

[feigeroman]

Saturday Movie Night: Snow (1963)

WARNING: The editing of the footage gradually speeds up over the course of the film, and the last 2-3 minutes contain several flash frames and flashing images. If you are at all prone to seizures and/or sensory overload, I would strongly suggest stopping the video at the 6:00 mark, if not giving it a miss entirely.

With Christmas just around the corner, I thought I'd treat you to something suitably wintry this week. During the bitter winter of 1962/63, director Geoffrey Jones was busy doing field research for a BTF production about design. Reviewing his test footage, he was struck by several stunning images of dark steam trains chruning across snowy white backdrops, and this inspired him to put forward an idea for a different film - contrasting the comfort of the passengers against the Herculean efforts of the staff to keep the trains running.

Jones' idea was given the green light, and he was immediately sent off with cameraman Wolfgang Suschitzky (later of Ring of Bright Water and get Carter fame) to shoot as much as he could before the cold snap came to an end. The footage they shot was supplemented by some of Jones' original 16mm test footage, and the odd snippet from the BTF archive (most notably 1955's Snowdrift At Bleath Gill). This was then all cut, in Jones' signature style, to a cover of Sandy Nelson's Teen Beat, arranged by Johnny Hawksworth and Daphne Oram.

[lizalfosrise]

Oh I’m gonna have to be so so brave when WhatTheF.. drops ughhh

[dostoyevsky-official]

Montreal vs snow: a feat of choreographed chaos

Montreal’s cold season is defined by a messy and unrelenting fight against the snow. Efforts to clear it cost nearly $200mn a year, more than any other city in the world. The biggest snow dumping ground is the Francon Quarry, a disused open-pit mine that spans an area equivalent to over 90 city blocks. Strewn with plastic bottles and rubbish picked up during snow removal, the quarry has become an urban glacier. As the piles of snow there grow larger, avalanches are starting to become a serious safety concern. Climate change has made Montreal’s efforts at snow clearance, or déneigement, more challenging than ever. The characteristics of annual snowfall are shifting. Total volume is down, but it has been concentrated into a shorter period of time. The freeze and thaw cycle is shorter too. This means the Francon dumping site has to be expanded so that snow collected in previous years has time to disappear. Until last summer, district snow depot foreman Giovanni Scattone was still trying to melt snow collected nearly 15 years ago during a particularly bad winter. “In 2008, we lost the sidewalks,” he tells me, watching anxiously as I nearly slip on a patch of ice while peering over the quarry’s edge. A good snowfall in Montreal means clearing 10,000km of roads and pavements — roughly the distance from here to Beijing. Snowploughs move in a grand, motorised choreography. “It’s fluid, nonstop, one truck after the other,” says Scattone.

The private snow removal business has a history of corruption and links to organised crime. A 2015 report by Montreal’s inspector general found evidence of bid-rigging (an official at one company was told he’d have his legs broken if he bid on a lucrative contract). According to reports by local news, there have also been attempts to defraud the city by artificially inflating truckloads of snow and on one occasion a high-profile firebombing of one suburban snow removal firm. No aspect of snow clearance is easy. For those who live here it can sometimes feel as if civilisation is getting in the way of what nature has decided should be a perfect blanket of white. Even de-icing comes with its own set of risks. The salt needed to treat the roads is poisonous to the city’s infrastructure, eating away at concrete, corroding steel and wearing down sewage pipes. If left uncleared, stones and grit mixed with salt turns into a fine dust that can cause air pollution during the summer. Alternatives are thin on the ground, though Montreal has experimented with substitutions, including coffee grinds: “It wasn’t very efficient,” says Sabourin, “it was pleasant though. The odour was marvellous.”

[konnosaurus]

love me tender (2016)

WHAT AN EPISODE!!!! poor freezing douglas having a shite time <3 and many snowploughs~

[steam-beasts]

Do engines still use snowplows? Or do they just push snow aside with their arms/paws? If so, I bet Thomas would feel happy for not wearing it lol

To start off, I find it a little tricky to explain, but the engines can kinda switch forms, so they can have wheels or legs at will. I draw them rarely in their wheel forms since I just generally find it hard to draw perfect circles 😭

Answering your question: yes, they still require snowploughs lol. Thomas is so mad about it.

(I hate how big his forehead is smh)

[fushiglow]

surprise valentine's day fic incoming ⛷️

good tidings for all who are sick of glo angst! i hear you're all in need of a good dose of vitamin ski, supplemented by fluff and (sauna) fun! bets that satoru will find a valentine's date who:

ends his loneliness; and

is prettier than the swiss alps at sunrise?

chapter one is snowploughing into your life tomorrow!

[katzenprinz]

More Say Nothing extras!!

This time a rundown of our beloved team’s callsigns.

So, for Salim and Jason, we address theirs and explain them in the fic. We chose Buffy for Salim for obvious reasons and Sweet Tea for Jason because it’s such a Southern American staple. (And delicious!)

We explained Nick being Sommersault in the fic, too. The way he dives into that roll to pick up Joey in the firefight, that man has absolutely pulled moves like that before.

Now, for the Goslings~

Palmer is “Casper” because he sees ghosts. Even though he stated in the fic that most ghosts are angry, if not outright malicious, and Casper is a friendly ghost, it just fit. Palmer has definitely been the most friendly of the Goslings toward Salim, after all, due to him admiring Salim a lot.

Elliott is “Broadway” since he loves his showtunes. We like to imagine that Rana has been subjected to Elliott softly singing through entire musicals while he helps her in the artifact room. And this boy absolutely sings in the shower. ALSO, extra fun fact: he is named after TS Eliot, who wrote the poems which were adapted into the music for CATS~

Mosson is “Dipper” because ????????? Ask Gabe.

And then there is Jones, who was dubbed “Moose” due to him being from Alaska. He probably told the Goslings about having plenty of run-ins with dangerous animals after him comment about the sling they used to airlift the vampire out for SOCOM, and the Goslings pounced on the fact that Jones has seen a lot of moose. He is also the largest member of the team, both in height and muscle.

We also gave Dr. Kim the callsign “Snowplough” because we decided that she is from a very snowy area of Colorado and really enjoys spending her time out in the winter weather.

Rana does not yet have a callsign, but she may get one in a future chapter!!