The LNER Encyclopedia

The attached picture shows an experimental snow clearing machine in use in Northumberland in 1947. The machine consisted of a modified Gloster Meteor jet engine mounted on a flat wagon. The photo was taken somewhere on the Wansbeck Valley Railway, but the machine was also tried on the Alnwick - Cornhill branch.
It was considered a failure, it was not very good at melting the snow, but it was very good at blowing out the ballast!

I'm sure that this machine or something similar was tried out on the Highdyke branch. I believe it not only removed the ballast but also set light to sleepers...

A similar but single engined device was used to clear snow by the RAF on the Hornsea branch. There are two pictures of the machine on pages 71 and 72 of "Lost Railways of Holderness" by Peter Price, Hutton Press 1989.

I would copy them to the forum but for breaching copyright laws.

I suspect the idea was used around 1947 because of the exceptionally heavy snow conditions that year.

Has anyone ever heard anything of this with regard to Stainmore? My grandfather has mentioned this with regard to the blockage at Bleath Gill in 1947.

As far as I know, it was tried out all over the North East so it is quite possible that it was used on the Stainmore line, however there is no mention of it in the famous film about the snow clearance there. Just last week I was talking to someone who lived at Whittingham Station during the 1940's, and she remembered the machine being used over the summit at Alnwick Moor; her father was one of the lengthmen who had to repair the damage it did to the track!
Apparently it blew the ballast out and sometimes derailed itself. It was also known to blow the locomotive backwards.

On Utube

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VTP3IPi-fug

Malcolm