This machine of the Canadian Pacific Railway has an airplane jet engine mounted on a flat-bed truck. It is primarily used to thaw frozen switches in the winter time. Here it is at Lake Louise thawing snow left on snowplow 400840 after the latter had been used to punch through avalanches in the Kicking Horse Pass near Partridge and Cathedral sidings the night before. The snow could not be left to melt on its own on the plow because it was suffering from an air leak affecting its pneumatic mechanism moving the wings in and out. Melted snow which refroze in the mechanism could disable it. Normally the procedure shown here is not performed.
The hot exhaust from the jet engine can be steered to a degree by the movable air funnel placed behind it. The engine produces 140 decibels of noise. If one is standing beside it one must wear double ear protection: plugs and ear muffs. If one only has ear plugs one can only come to within 100 feet of it as the noise level is already at 120 decibels at that point. The crewman told me that this is the only operating unit on the CPR. A second unit exists in Calgary, but is not operational at this time.
TURN UP THE VOLUME!!!