Glyce the M1 Rotary SnowPlow

[Probably the only steam snowplow character ever concocted this character has occupied much of my time for the last few weeks I hope you all like her and a special thanks to ZeroRM for help with the back story and consulting]


Glyce, nicknamed "лезвие" (blade) in Soviet service, was originally a Canadian-built 0-6-6-0 mallet used to haul freight...that is until a poorly-maintained stretch of track broke and caused her derailment. Her axles and much of the frame broken, most of her was written off, but her boiler was still in-tact, and was approved as the basis for a new steam snowplow; the project was a joint effort between the United States, Canada and Britain to develop a more powerful steam snowplow out of fears of an especially cold winter that could cut off rail lines between the US and Canada in the mid to late 1930s. She would have been placed into service with Canada in 1940 had World War II not intervened. Low priority was placed on production of the prototype due tot he war effort, but a Soviet ambassador on tour of Ontario, Canada with a Comonwealth official saw the incomplete snowplow and noted that the USSR could use such a machine on the Eastern Front and the Trans-Siberian railway. Deciding it was better to let the Soviets make use of something they wouldn't need anyway, the official arranged for the locomotive to be placed on a cargo vessel along with the ambassador. Despite narrowly avoiding a torpedo from a U-Boat, the ship arrived in Russia, and construction was completed at the shipyards.

By now it was late 1943, and the Germans were on the retreat, but her first role came in the form of clearing snow from rail lines to Stalingrad in order to allow the ruined city to begin organizing limited reconstruction efforts, then from there she went ahead of several trains taking newly-built T-34 tanks from the factories there to the Kursk salient to take on the German counterattack there. She would continue to serve clearing rail lines on the Eastern Front until the spring thaw in 1945, when she was transferred to the Trans-Siberian railway in order to clear up supply lines for a planned Soviet invasion of Manchuria. The war ended that year, with Glyce continuing to serve on a joint Soviet and Chinese line until relations soured in 1960; after that, she served ten more years on the Trans-Siberian Railway before being retired from service. She was placed in storage and repainted in 1940s military livery that she had before in preparation for display at a railway museum, but she recieved low priority for restoration, and wasn't slated to be restored until as late as 1994; the collapse of the Soviet Union set this back even further to 2004, when she was at last restored to operational status and placed on display. She did not fight in the revolution, but she proved invaluable in shipping supplies throughout the European theater, as even in the summer, her raw hauling power made her invaluable for logistical purposes. After the revolution, she was hired by a salvage and repair company, where she works to this day.