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Snow Trac In Delta Junction Area

SnowtracUSA

New member
Has anyone ever seen this snow trac in the Delta junction area ?
 

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Snowtrac Nome

member formerly known as dds
GOLD Site Supporter
Re: Snow Trac In Delata Junction Area

you might look up rough woods in in nennana there are 5 there that belonged to a now deceased member. a fellow ham told me about the conversation he had with rough woods wife and she was thinking about selling them off.
 

akimp

New member
Re: Snow Trac In Delata Junction Area

Don the Rough woods Snow Tracs can be seen on google maps in Nennana next to the shop on main street. I suppose he could have others but theres 4 in google. I always watch his video when they tow material out to build the cabin. Very inspiring and keeps me focused on why I live in AK.
 

SnowtracUSA

New member
Re: Snow Trac In Delata Junction Area

Don, don't quote me on this but I believe that I read somewhere that rough woods Larry passed away......
 

Snowtrac Nome

member formerly known as dds
GOLD Site Supporter
Re: Snow Trac In Delata Junction Area

my contact said he counted 5 out there last year he may have had a parts machine also stashed in woods some place. yes rough woods is no longer with us but my contact talked wit his wife a couple of years ago when he stayed there she said now that rough woods isn't there she was thinking of selling them off.
 

Lyndon

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
Re: Snow Trac In Delata Junction Area

You'll have to dig around in threads that I posted, probably "It's a Suprise", but there was a Snow Trac Dealer in Delta Junction that I bought out. His name was Al Gartz, and he ran a gas station/tire store and package store. He purchased all of Alyeska's snow trac's when they auctioned them off and sold them off peacmeal.
 

Snowtrac Nome

member formerly known as dds
GOLD Site Supporter
Re: Snow Trac In Delata Junction Area

Lyndon the one he was looking at was a 2 band model that Big Al was going to buy. did Alyeska have any 2 band models.
 

Lyndon

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
Re: Snow Trac In Delata Junction Area

Alyeska probably had 30 machines representing the whole line of manufacture. I only saw newer Snow Trac, 3 belt, and Snow Masters that were 5 belt. Since the pipeline did not go into operation until '76 it is unlikely that they had any of the older design. Once Westermaskiner ceased production they auctioned off the entire collection and switched to Tucker Sno-Cat's. Of these they purchased 44, making it possibly the largest single sale the Tucker Corperation ever made. All of their original fleet bore manufacture dates of 82/83 I believe. This would be a good question for Glacierparkbus as she has some affiliation with Tucker.
Al Gartz, then the Snow Trac dealer for Alaska, purchased all of the machines at auction. I understand he gave in the naborhood of 2500$ each for them. He had a good German mechanic working for him that dressed up each machine. All of the Alyeska machines were equipped with the ambulance dual rear door set up.
I owned one of the alyeska ambulance Snow Tracs and it had been well cared for. It has been thru at least 2 owners in Northern California since. At least one of those owners was a member of this forum.
I did come across one of the trailers at a pump station many years later. It had the very distinctive "Herring-Bone" cleat impressions on the wood deck of a Snow Master that had lived on it. I made a point of digging thru all their service manual collections at each of the pump stations and ended up with several Owner/Operator manuals that never did make it to the sale.
Al Gartz used one machine for plowing snow around the Delta Junction area, and had another for Hunting. One time he had a carb/fuel system problem. Being a serious beer drinker he punched a tiny hole in a beer can and used that to run the cat. It would only run a short distance. A search party was sent out looking for him, did not locate him, and he made it back 'under his own steam'.
After he sold out the dealership to Bill Bolunis of anchorage, he kept quite a collection of spare parts, enough for himself and one associate. When people appraoched him looking for a part he would just tell them he didn't sell parts anymore. When I approached him one fine 30 below day in Delta Junction I had the alyeska machine in tow, a matchbox toy, and one of the articles I got generated in VW Trends. He said he didn't sell parts, but that if I came back the following summer he would sell me the entire collection. At this point he gave me a huge stack of Snow Trac flyers and sales literature, a whole suitcase full.
The following summer I purchased his parts which included a brand new set of tracks for a 3 belt snow trac, about 30 tires and lots of undercarriage components, wheels, hand cranks, ST25's, and 7 or 8 gasoline fired cab heaters. I thought it was a pretty good deal for 3500$, as the 2 new tracks were worth that much each. The tracks were in the original crate. The parts filled a 8 foot bed pick-up and the cab. Northwest Tell, out of Whitehorse, Yt, was without question the largest user and single biggest customer of Westermaskiner. In all, the Canadian railway, which owned the Canadian phone companies of Northwest Tell, and BC Tell, purchased almost a quarter of the entire production, including the last machine produced by Aktiv. They gave 30,000 for that last Snow Master according to the purchasing agent. Between Northwest tells parts collection which I bought the same year, and Al Gartz's collection I had one of every part in "New-Old-Stock"(N.O.S.). There are times that I regret having sold the complete collection. And I have no doubt that many of the owners who are members of this forum would have appreciated that. I used the NOS parts as templates to manufacture replacement parts. The factory service manual collection that Al Gartz gave me included some factory blue prints.
 

jask

Member
Re: Snow Trac In Delata Junction Area

Lydon I have a few points to ad about the Canadian companies; Northwest tel originally was a wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian National telegraph ( CNT).
Canadian NORTHERN Rail (CNoR) took over the Western Union subsidiary Great North West Telegraph around 1915, but like many railroads around WW1 ran into financial trouble- the Canadian Federal Railway, Canadian Northern, and eventually Grant trunk, Grand trunk Pacifc and a few small players were amalgamated to become Canadian National Railway (CN or CNR ) and when CN rail was Nationalized in the early 20s the CN telegraph arm was organized separately.
At the end of WW2 the Government of Canada contracted CN telegraph to operate and maintain the landlines that had been erected on the Alaska Highway and by the end of the 50s CN Telegraph had begun a microwave transmission system from Northern Alberta into the Yukon and on to Alaska. The Big DEW line ( White Alice ) troposphere scatter antennas were built by CNT under military contract, and through the 60s they developed further microwave systems through the MacKenzie river and delta. IN the late 70s the company would be spun off as a wholly owned subsidiary of CN and become CN Telecom then North West Tel.
just to complicate things.... The North West Telephone Company was a telephone and radiophone operator in Northern BC - totally different company, they were later bought and amalgamated into BC telephone in 1961. BC tel was not owned or affiliated with rail telegraphs although they did operate numerous microwave systems of their own and owned and maintained these separately ( there have been a few that have shown up in the forum!) ... as an aside- you knew about the North West Tel maintenance yard in Kamloops B.C. and some of the locals here tell me stories of seeing LOTS of those machines in that yard up into the late 80s, but there was also a BC Tel regional depot in town were they serviced their Snow-tracs...
The telephone Companies in Alberta were a mix of independent and Government carrier until they amalgamated in the 90s and were also independent of the "telegraph" companies- and in 1998 the Alberta and BC companies joined to form Telus which is now the second largest carrier in Canada ( 20+%) after Bell (40+%)

oh and NWTel?...

Northwestel was incorporated as a company on January 1, 1979, after CNT became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Canadian National (CN). Northwestel's continued tradition of excellence resulted in its sale to Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE) in 1988. With the acquisition of Bell Canada's eastern Arctic operations four years later, Northwestel became the sole telecommunications supplier North of the 60th parallel- an area nearly half the size of the entire country. Ownership of Northwestel was transferred from BCE to Bell Canada in 1999.
How is that for some History!? the two defining developments that probably resulted in almost all of the need for Snowtracs I believe were the Alaska highway contract and the microwave systems, and both of these were driven by the need for reliable military ( DEW line ) and civilian communications in the North.
 

Lyndon

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
Re: Snow Trac In Delata Junction Area

The head maintenance engineer for BC Tell's St. Gorge office was Harry Dewient. The head maintenance engineer for NW Tell at the Whitehorse office was Rory Corneil. According to Mr. Corniel, they had a snow trac at each microwave repeater the length of the Al-Can highway (Alaska Highway for "lower 48'er's). Some repeaters had just a shed at the highway that housed an ST4 to get to the mountaintop radio installation. Others housed a Snow Trac and Power generation equipment. At the installations where the generators were at the bottom the machines tended to get used less as the radio gear required less servicing than the generators. He said they hauled a 1000 lb crankshaft for a LeRoi generator up in one of the snow tracs, and at one of the little sheds a Marmot had eaten the wood floor out of the Snow Trac. Over the years the radio technicians and mechanics damaged enough of the machines that they brought them all back to Whitehorse. From then on a mechanic loaded them on a truck, and drove the radio techs up the mountain. He was held responsable for the machine. Rory said that they had pictures of all 200 machines together in Whitehorse. A picture I would have liked to see. This represents almost one tenth of the total production. Snow Trac flyers have pictures of the "CN" machines. Of those machines 2 are currently at the Jamboree. Both of those came with CN fire Extinguishers, and one with an ID card. The 2nd biggest service center according to Rory, was the one at Kamloops. There are 5 exhaust designs that Snow Trac used over the years, and one of them was devised by the NW Tell office at Whitehorse. They did not go thru a Dealer either, dealing directly with the manufacturer. All the parts were in neat little Westermaskiner bags. I just missed one of the 2 auctions in Whitehorse when they sold off most of the collection. They went for 2300 C @. I made 7 trips up and down the Alcan, mostly in winter, and stopped at every old run down shack that had once housed a snow trac looking for "Red", the color all snow tracs came from the factory and all replacement part came. Later I made some attempts to track down Kamloops machines and did succeed in finding one beat up Trac Master.
Over the years I also tracked down CN/Phone company machines in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. They showed up periodically in the Canadian Equipment Trader which I subscribed to. The last time one showed up was shortly after this forum started up. The Purchasing Agent for CN, out of Quebec, said they had them for the railway as well as their susidary phone companies, in all the provences.
 

jask

Member
Re: Snow Trac In Delata Junction Area

I think Nav Canada ( our version of the FAA ) may have had a few at some of the airports as well. Was Harry Dewient in Prince George?
I tried to contact the fellow that was in charge of the BC tel machines here in Kamloops but it looks like he passed away before I was able to talk with him.
 

Lyndon

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
Re: Snow Trac In Delata Junction Area

Rory retired and the last time he contacted me he was living in victoria. The last time I had contact with Harry was at Prince George, but it was around 94/95. Probably retired by now.
I enjoyed your historical perspective, very imformative. Thanks for that.

I did all of my 'hunting' for Snow Trac's by phone and in person, well before the internet and this forum. I used to write down the serial number of every machine I looked at. Some of the best leeds I got were from Electric Motor rewind shops. A guy that was a Propane delivery guy for 10 or 15 years, then became a UPS Delivery guy for another 10 or more gave me quite a list, all in Alaska. As far as Canada goes I learned the most thru the Bombardier central distributor's parts guy in Cargary. He introduced me to Rory and Harry, who in turn introduced me to the two brothers that owned Vallard construction, an outfit that built power and phone lines all across BC, Ytr, NW tr, Alberta and Saskatchewan. It was a lot of fun, and I got to meet a lot of great people. Spent a lot on phone bills too!
 
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