Snow has been a recurring problem since the early days of the railways. Unlike today's track-mounted snowploughs, the functions were previously divided among a number of interconnected carriages. One link in the chain was the track-clearing carriage shown here.

When the railway came to Sweden in the mid-1800s, road snowploughs were initially used on the railway as well. They were pulled by oxen but soon became very impractical with increasing train traffic.

Already in the 1860s, ploughs attached to the front of steam locomotives began to be used. However, this proved to involve a lot of assembly work before and after the winter season. Therefore, a decade later, standalone plough wagons were constructed that could be pushed ahead of the steam locomotives.

Even after clearing the tracks of snow, the problem remained that there was still snow between the rails. If the snow was not removed, it would soon be packed together and eventually cause problems for traffic on the track and could even pose a safety risk.

Initially, snow was removed by hand with shovels or with a simple wooden plough, of the type we show here. This was time-consuming and unsustainable as railway traffic intensified.

Much simpler was the so-called track cleaner, a device that specifically removed snow between the rails. From around 1920, specialized track cleaning wagons appeared in a variety of designs. An example is shown here. Because the ploughs of the track cleaner reached down between the rails, they had to be manually lifted at road crossings, switches, bridges, and similar points.

Thus, a train was used to remove snow from the track. The plough wagon rolled at the front, followed by the steam locomotive, and finally the track cleaner. Since the 1970s-80s, these snow-clearing trains have increasingly been replaced by heavy locomotives equipped with multiple snowploughs and later also by wagons with rotating brushes. For the most extreme snow amounts, such as on the Iron Ore Line, snow blowers have long been used.