The independent-reporter. [volume] (Skowhegan, Me.) 1909-1955, 1923-04-12
4 Brave Battle
BY Roland T. Patten)

About everybody IN tnlS part OF
Maine has born a part OF the burden
of the present winter. Those who
have had business out of doors have
OF course suffered most Keeping
the highways open for traffic and
maintaining service ON the railroads
has been the most spectacular bat
tie of this extraordinary season. The
steam roads with their heavy equip
ment were in a position to put up the
best fight, but often they have had
very serious time of 1t. With the
trolley lines the contest has been
most desperate one.
When listening in on the radio, If
the music fades we yield to feeling
of vexatiOn, when really we ought
not to wonder at all The marvel is
not that the waves fail to arrive for
small per cent Of the time, but
that they come at all We take al
together too much for granted. When
we walk along our residence street
and arrive at Madison avenue at the
moment scheduled fer the RAISING
trolley we simply take it for granted
that the car ought to heave in sight.
If we look up and down the avenue
and don't see it we are apt to grumble
mentally, perhaps audibly at the de-
lay 1t should do us good to know
something of what it has cost in men
tai effort, physical labor and cash to
maintain this road at all the past
winter. The Somerset Traction road
over which the crowds go to and from
Lakewood and Madison during the
summer season now presents very
strange appearance. When the most
of us travel the outlook presents
pleasing fields. wooded hills, stream
or two, the cleaning surface of Lake
Wesserunsett and the distant noun
tains. The mountains are still
part of the prospect but about every
thing else is under cover. A trolley
trip between Skowhegan and Madi-
son nowadays Is q little more than
an excursion between two walls of
snow. Until the recent warm days,
it was in many places as high or
higher than the car window. Even
this huge snow trough twelve miles
long would not he there but for the
tireless persistence of manager Her
bert l.. SWEET seconded in a really
heroic manner by Rueben Perry,
snow-plow man, and Percy White
more, the superintendent of the car
barn.
The earlier SHOWS were of course
handled without extraordinary diff
Guilty. AS the snow wall grew along
the sides of the track, however. the
problem became a very serious one.
Mr.. Perry would run the snow-plow
back and forth day and night as long
as he could keep, awake, reliyed
by Percy Whittemore when he was
actually Obliged to yield to fatigue.
The big snow plow has done SPLEEN
didly but in the battle with the drifts
has carried such an overload that
it required frequent trips to the car
barn for repair.
The ingenious manner in which the
combat with snow drifts is carried on
Is quite interesting. Where matters
are not too bad the pillow will SIM
plv back off, get good start, and
plunge into the drift as far as its
momentum will carry 1t. Where this
process will not butt through, re-
course is had to tunnelling out thru
the sides. Workmen will shovel a
tunnel through under the drifts at
right angles with the track. These
are called pockets and when the big
pillow comes along the soft snow is
forced out through them. A series
of these, fifty feet apart, will make
it possible to go through where other
wise the pillow would certainly be
stalled.
OF course the cost of this sort of
thing is ten times the revenue result
I ing from the operation & the road
during the period. The public
should recognize and appreciate the
effort thus made 1t is simply an
understanding on the part of the man
agement of an obligation they as
sumo to maintain the service. Con-
sidering the extraordinary conditions
they have certainly done their full
duty.