Snowbound

(Associated Press.)

—“It’s amazing how much this thing can throw at me!”
I said that the other night as I began shutting down this laptop.
Prior to shutdown I checked my e-mail. I’m on a Yahoo mailing-list of the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum. (I’m a railfan.) Posted was a YouTube video of a snowed-in and abandoned steam-locomotive being rescued.
I clicked it. Workers thawed frozen wheel-bearings with torches. Men with snowblowers cleared around the snow-plastered locomotive. The engine was of course dead.
Finally another steamer chuffed up to couple. Coupler-workings had to be thawed. The snow-encrusted locomotive was dragged away.
There was question regarding details. Clearly the locomotive was European. It was a tank-engine, but not “Thomas.” It was large; a 2-10-2 I think.
The fact it was dragged away by another steamer makes me wonder myself. But the video looked recent.
A second RGVRM member posted a link to a “Daily Mail” article about a gigantic snowstorm burying Germany and Austria. Somewhere in the article was mention of a railfan excursion with a steam-locomotive — that locomotive was abandoned after getting stuck in a HUGE snowdrift.
I didn’t have time to read the article, but it had at least 40-50 photographs, plus quite a few videos. It was past bedtime, but here I was scrolling through those many pictures.
The article was about the snowstorm, but many pictures were of trains snowed in. Also cars, trucks, and buses. One video was a goat being shoveled out by railroad workers.
Picture after picture after picture. The scroll-bar was tiny; would I ever get to the end?
My computer is antediluvian. Yet it can hurl 89 bazilyun pictures at me. Utterly beyond imagining back in 1962 when I graduated high-school.
The locomotive was meter-gauge on the Harz Narrow Gauge Railways (Harzer Schmalspurbahnen) in what used to be East Germany. It goes to a ski resort in the Harz mountains, and it still uses steam.