Track & Bridges
PVC Piping for Winter Time Protection
Jan 4, 2006
By John Dale |
Author
Bio
After the second bout I got to thinking how can I prevent or get rid of this annoying freezing rain.
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 The winter of 2005/2006 has so far turned out to be warmer than usual. This means that instead of just using my newly purchased snow plow for the railway, we had some serious freezing rain on several occasions so far. After the second bout I got to thinking how can I prevent or get rid of this annoying freezing rain. It is not as easy to remove as snow and I actually took a portable tiger torch around the track (very carefully) on a couple of days. Then I figured that my left over 4” PVC piping if cut in half might cover the track.
I had initially thought of just laying some old car tarpaulin cut in 4” strips around the track, and that might actually work for frost and freezing rain but I felt that PVC pipe would do even better if it actually snowed as well. The intention will be to cut to exact lengths and number them and even cut some angles to cover 100% but the accompanying photos show the basic result which actually works very well so far. The piping is simply non-approved 4” PVC sewer pipe!! Non-perforated naturally!  Many years ago we had made our ultralight aircraft winter skis out of irrigation piping cut longitudinally so I cut some PVC pipe the same way and laid it on the track.
It worked just fine on the sections I tried with the next bad weather so down to the store and check out pricing and getting the store to cut it. A 10’ section cost about $8 US and sometimes they charged me $1-$2 to cut in half longitudinally and as well I got them to cut it into 2’ 4’ and 5’ sections depending on how straight the track is.
You could cut it at home for length using a standard skil saw quite easily but I was lazy and they do not charge much to do it. It is a bit of a pain to remove all sections before running but so far it has worked well.  In some of the photos there is no snow as we have had a complete melt, which is really unusual but the temperature is hovering right around the freezing point so it is best left covered unless I am going to run it through the day or friends are coming over.
It worked very well in a 3”-4” snowfall, being easier to remove than just with a snowplow. I now have more of a guarantee of all season running in a transitional climate. 
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