Zebra Stripes on Plows

[Krackel Hopper]

I've been looking at some plows lately, and I am curious why the plows are no longer painted with the safety stripes?

 

I noticed on this wiki page, the plow for DD14-323 had safety stripes, but was painted over.  If you look at the photo, the red paint is chipping off the bottom revealing the yellow/black.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/JNR_DD14_323.JPG

 

Would there be a reason to remove the safety stripes?

 

The DD14 set on HobbySearch even mentions it, but the machine translation is a little goofy:

"- Reproduce the shape of a zebra pattern in recent years lost Rotariuingu"

 

Does anybody know why they got away from this?

 

Thanks!

[KenS]

Probably a cost-of-labor reason.  It takes more work to mask and paint two colors, than to just hose the whole thing down with one.

 

And while zebra-stripes are good against arbitrary backgrounds, red probably stands out fairly well against a white snowy backdrop.

[bill937ca]

If the safety stripes are on the blade they would be covered by snow during operations and not visible. The only place I could find zebra stripes was on Hakodate snow sweepers. But they on the street in traffic.

 

 

By comparsion, this is Sapporo.

 

 

 

White its winter and snow is on everyone`s mind how about some steeple cab and snowplow action?

 

[marknewton]

Bill, re that last video you posted - WOW! 

 

Thanks, and all the best for the New Year,

 

Mark.

[bill937ca]

Bill, re that last video you posted - WOW! 

 

Thanks, and all the best for the New Year,

 

Mark.

 

Thanks Mark, and all the best for you.

[Sacto1985]

I believe that final video was taken at Kuroishi Station--the last station of the Kōnan Railway Company's Kōnan Line--after a major snowstorm. I didn't know that the snowplow could "pivot" around so it can operate in snowplowing mode or snowblowing mode!

[cteno4]

Bill,

 

Spectacular videos!

 

The scenic shot was wonderful, too bad they didn't have a dead cat and got far away from the slrs, ruins a beautiful scene!

 

That last plow was great. I assume the turntable pivot was in the plow, couldn't see anything in the tracks when it rode off. Really cool. We need a model of this little guy!

 

Amazed they kept that auger going and those guys walking right in front of it! One slip and theyre stew meat!

 

Nicely done video. Wonder if some of those close shots was a go pro mounte near the track. The go pros now are really fantastic little cameras now, sorely tempted to get one, they even have wifi so you can remote view with your smart device.

 

Sure would not want to get hit by that snow exhaust!

 

Cheers

 

Jeff