Postby chuck » Wed Nov 21, 2018 10:01 am
Video was shot at Lake Louise, very high up in the Canadian Rockies. This is just pass the summit at Kicking Horse Pass, grade wise. About 11 track miles but only 125 foot elevation difference. The gradient difference between Field (previous "station") and the exit of the upper spiral tunnel is about 755' with a ruling grade of 2.2%, aka the profile through the pass is not even close to symmetrical.
The plow had been called in to clear avalanche debris in the pass. I don't know what the ambient temp was (can get to -30 C) but a fair amount of heat may have lost to the air. Also that's not just snow/ice packed onto the plow. There appears to be a fair amount of vegetation and probably rock packed in with the snow/ice. They had to clear the unit as quickly as possible because the pneumatic lines that operate the wings were at risk. They didn't want melt to get into those lines and freeze up.
I went back to read the "commentary". Ice like that doesn't respond well to physical blows and they could not risk damaging the plows surface. It takes one calorie of heat to raise one cubic centimeter of ice one degree and then it jumps to 80 calories per cc to actually melt the ice. Considering how much ice they had and how little time to get rid of it, $100 worth of jet fuel and an hour's time seem pretty reasonable to me. Regarding the "wear and tear" on the jet, these are "cast off" units mostly from corporate/military jets/helicopters that can't be used for human flights because of the advanced number of hours of use. They do make great oversized blow dryers.
Once I built a railroad, I made it run,
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad, now it's done --
Brother, can you spare a dime?