RAILWAY SNOW-PLOUGHS.

IN countries where severe snowstorms are of rare occurrence, and where the average snowfall is of but moderate depth, the wedge-shaped plough, propelled by two or more locomotives, usually suffices to clear snow from a railway track. But if deep drifts form they have to be charged repeatedly, and it sometimes happens that plough and locomotives get stuck, and must be dug out.

On many lines of the United States, es pecially on the mountain sections, the type of plough just referred to would be quite unable to cope with the drifts which must be penetrated again and again in the winter, and have a foundation of hard-packed icy snow. Necessity, the mother of invention, produced, in the late 'eighties, the now world-famous rotary snow-plough, so designed as to eat its way steadily through a drift, much as an auger penetrates wood, and to rid itself of its take continuously by centrifugal force.