In the famous Chevy two-tone white and blue color combination. Back in '59, my dad almost bought a '56 wagon in that scheme but bought a '57 instead. Doug
February 9th, 1982 at Emporia, KS. The plow was being hauled west, note the marker mounted to the blades on the plow. Mark Simonson photo.
Apparently it did require outside power. I found this description of the thing elsewhere, but it only kind of answers the question...? "Santa Fe 199361 is a 1959 rebuild of an old Leslie (#199398; blt 11/1892 ALCo-Cooke) rotary on a steam engine tender from ATSF 3769 with a GE 4-GE716 traction motor turning the rotary. It would MU with just about anything IIRC, but often sat with a 6-Axle slug mother (SD39m). It is radically different than the BN critters, so it is probably doomed to sit in Topeka shops as an oddball."
I really don’t know much about the ATSF rotary plows. They probably started out as steam driven blades but were later converted to electric. Whether they had an onboard diesel generator or had to be mated to a power unit I don’t know. They were moving it in that image so may have disconnected it from a power unit.
If that photo was taken later than June 1964, then the little guy was no longer on the big road. #463 was sold to American Grain in South Plainview TX. Here it is back in 1974:
Seeing the rusty divots in the pilot have me thinking those did not come from any collision. Looks more like they did some sort of pushing where something rubbed a lot.
Wow, nice photo, r_i_straw! That one reminds me of the scene in the movie East of Eden where they are loading up cars with lettuce and ice, and then the train steams out of town. I guess it's time to dig up that old movie again. Thank you for sharing.
