In the Pilot House. Crew member Anthony DeBellis keeps the watch from the pilot house of Nevada Northern's Rotary B, as his plow extra heads out into a desert snow storm for some line-clearing operations on the Keystone Branch. To the uninitiated, the pilot house of a steam rotary snow plow may look like the best seat in the house. It appears to afford a commanding view of the track ahead that any steam locomotive engineer might envy. When the rotary is not working, that perception is pretty accurate. In the heat of battle however, the pilot house is a pretty mean ride. The windows that afford that "commanding view" are pretty useless during actual plow operations. Snow is not only blowing out the discharge chute, but it is typically blowing out of the intake in all other directions as well. The best view is actually obtained by doing what Anthony is doing here....leaning out the pilot house door. Unfortunately, that puts him right out in the cold and the snow. If he needs to warm up however, he won't have far to go. The steam from the engine below him and the steam jets inside the intake combine to make the pilot house a bit like a sauna. Oh, and did I mention that the whole contraption shakes like a wet dog when the impeller is running full tilt? The cushy jobs during rotary plow operations are actually back in the cabs of the pusher locomotives. They are reasonably well isolated from the cacophony up front and with the train barely doing a couple of miles an hour, they're pretty much on easy street.
