Metromelt is the is the old name for one of five
snow melting machines owned and occasionally operated by
The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto. They have recently been renamed as the Toronto Snow Melting Machines, as
amalgamation has caused the city to eliminate the word
Metro from its vocabulary.
Melting up to 136
tonnes of snow per hour, the
Sherman Tank of
snow removal assists the city on major arteries after a
heavy snowfall or
ice storm. Similar to the machinery used at airports to deice airport runways during cold
weather, the machines take in snow,
heat and
agitate it with a powerful
diesel engine until it's melted. From there, water is drained into
sewers.
Metromelt measures 17.4
m long, 3.9m high, 3.1m wide and has a ground clearance of 27
cm. It weighs 42.6 tonnes, but its
weight increases to 56 tonnes when at full
capacity. When operating, Metromelt spans and clears an entire and is often followed by
Bobcat haulers that
shovel the rest into
dump trucks.
The city brought the first machine into service back in the
1970s and I
vaguely remember seeing them around as a
child. Not many people I know can
recall them but I remember they were painted
yellow (which contained
lead and is
no longer used) and
dingy back then. I often thought that my
memory of the machines was
fictional and I was somehow too-interested in
heavy equipment for my own good.
When I saw one again during
the snow storm of '99, I was immediately relieved of my fears. It was melting snow while I was on my way home in
the middle of the night. I could see the
flashing blue lights of the city's efforts from far away but as I walked toward their
slow progress, I walked into one of the strangest feelings of
deja-vu.
A
convoy of
tow trucks sat waiting in the path of the operation, pulling cars out of
snowbanks and out of the way of the Metromelt. It
trudged along slowly but noisily eating
four foot snowbanks and
belching diesel exhaust and I stopped to watch the melter, the tow trucks, the Bobcats and the
dump trucks work. Despite the biting cold, it was fascinating and one of my faintest memories was relived in their tuned melting routine.
Manufacturer's Photo:
http://www.trecan.com/snowmelt/Metromelt.html
Photo and Civic Use Information:
http://www.city.toronto.on.ca/roads/torontomelt.htm