Someone may want to talk to the folks at the Nevada Northern Railway Museum. They probably have more switches than the WW&F has just in their yard alone. They put on winter photo shoots twice every February and keeping the switches clean is indeed a continuing problem. I believe I do recall seeing them using torches of some sort....along with a myriad of other things (shovels, ice picks, brooms). It is important work. I've seen several derailments happen at NN as well as up at Sumpter Valley due to ice jams. No equipment or people hurt, but it made for a lot of work cleaning up.
Matthew Malkiewicz, Jim Wrinn and myself were in a caboose that ended up about 30 degrees off the track alignment in February of 2014 up at Sumpter.....this despite the railroad guys spending a significant amount of time clearing ice jams the day before. The train was running in reverse (as photo trains often do) and that lightweight caboose suddenly hopped off the rails. Fortunately, the three of us felt the rough ride over the mile or so leading up to the event and we had prepared for that eventuality. We elected Jim to dump the air because he was the tallest and could easily reach the brake valve. When Matthew called out "we're off", Jim calmly turned the valve handle and we stopped very quickly. Darn good thing we did. We were on a fill at the time and if the train had continued, we likely would have tumbled down the embankment. As it was, there were no bumps or bruises and the Sumpter guys had the caboose back on the rails damage-free that afternoon.
