Caption: VIA steals the show in the Snowbelt...It's been 5 hours since the last passenger train, and mother nature is angry. It's cold, -15C, the prevailing winds are blowing from Lake Huron at about a continuous 40 KM/H and as a result the snow on the ground drifts. Boy does she drift - what you see accumulated on the track is 3-4 foot high, 1500 foot long drifts of just snow. Five hours? Imagine what happens overnight! That's why we have plows on GEXR and OSR in Ontario. Formula for plowing on Ontario: Viscous (non frozen solid) Snow on the ground + Continuous wind (30+ kph sustained for hours at a time) and no train for a while = Snowplows. Or in this case, you do have VIA..

In the distance I hear the continuous, muffled sound of a familiar horn and soon you see puffs of white stuff appear down the track, growing ever closer. For brief moments, and I mean really brief moments, the nose of a VIA locomotive peeks through the plume - enter Evidence A above. The vast majority of photographing a VIA train plowing through a long cut of drifted snow is just a plume of white. Why though? 6437 lacks blades and wings like those on a snowplow which would effortlessly throw snow in either direction, by which, the crew would (mostly) retain visibility in the high plow cab. :) VIA engineers see nothing but white, the horn is left on continuously or you'd plug it up and render it useless, plus you do have a crossing coming up


Believe it or not GEXR 518 followed this train.. with a snowplow extra but VIA clearly stole the show.

For a limited time - prints of this photo are available at Fine Art America here