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Media Type: Photographic Prints
Source: Automobile Reference Collection
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 Snow-Shoe Motor Vehicles- Solve Winter's Problems

by Murray Fahnestock S.A.E.

Canada's tremendous industrial progress, with the need for reaching industrial and military sites, in spite of all that weather can do to prevent this, and the need for patrolling public utility power and telephone liens, has created a growing market for all-weather, go anywhere motor vehicles, which are best sold and serviced by those in the automotive industyr. While the wheel, was one of man's greatest inventions (one which was never duplicated by Nature), yet the wheel has its limitations, when there is snow on the ground or the ground is soft or muskeg. The wheel has only a spot contact with the road and so tends to dig in and down, where a caterpillar tread distributes the weight over a large area and acts as a snow shoe. With a weight distirubtion of one pound per square inch.

Something new and important was added to military motor vehicles, with the adoption of caterpillar treads on tanks in World War One. Something new and important has been added to go-anywhere motor vehicles with the use of caterpillar treads on special vehicles for use in man's war against Nature's obstacles, such as snow and muskeg. Minerals and other forms of wealth, are where you find them. While Canada's industrial development cannot always wait for roads to be built and kept cleared for wheeled traffic, especially since the modern trend towards lower and lower passenger cars has reduced road clearances to far less than is sometimes desirable.

Production of the Bombardier Snow-mobile was started during WWII and so is the result of more than 20 years experience during which many improvements have been made although the fundamentals of the Bombardier suspension, with ten supporting points dividing the load equally on every wheel and ski reduce to a minimum the unit pressure on the snow, while its plain "toboggan" type bottom allows the Bombardier snowmobile to slide on deep snow. When there is no snow, the skis can be readily removed and regular wheels replaced at the front. With this equipment, the Bombardier is available for use as a 12 or 15-passenger bus, for charter trips by tourists or for carrying the mails or as an ambulance. OR by the military for carrying personnel.

The Bombardier "Muskeg" tractor is built for off-road operation on snow, muskeg, marsh, bush slopes and other rough ground and is also used for prospecting as the flexible suspension make it suitable for prospectors and others in the mining industry and by the oil industry for research parties, water tanks and personnel carriers. It is also used for freighting in snow blocked roads, in newly opened up regions, marshes and waste land and by the lumber industry for hauling pulpwood. Public service companies use it in the construction and maintenance of telephone, power and pipe lines, patrolling national parks and for fighting forest fires. And by winter resurts for hauling material up mountains for hte construction of ski-lifts and for the packing of ski trails.

The Bombardier Muskeg tractor has treads 28 inches wide, with a double set of links on each side, thus giving it adequate "floation" over soft, squishy muskeg. Track belts are of endless, rayon cord, reinforced with steel cable. The toboggon type bottom of the hull is free from protruding parts and designed to slide over obstructions. The Muskeg tractor is also used by farmers on fields which are too soft to permit the use of wheeled tractors. These various snow vehicles are not only used in northern Canada, but also in ICeland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland, as well as in some South American countries as a product of which Canadians may well be proud.

Another make of over snow transportation includes the Sno Cats with four caterpillar treads and teh smaller, two-passenger Sno Kittens with two caterpillar treads and powered by our English Anglia engineer. The basic principle of hte Sno-Cat's operation is a series of open, cleated tracks which revolve around a pontoon of flanged, anti-friction rollers. The pontoon bottom surfaces, on which the entire weight of the vehicle moves, are of stainless steel. Four of these Sno-Cats were used in the recent trip over the South Pole and across the Antartic continent, for which a Navy certificate of Merit was received, for Operation Deep Freeze. 

The Sno-Cats operate on unusual, sliding pontoons, with positive traction. The broad pontoon runners slide directly on the snow. Between each track link is an open space, through which the snow packs up against the bottom of the pontoon shoe, providing a compressed surface on which the pontoon slides. The sharp propelling grouser links, which are embedded in the compressed snow, (under each pontoon) provide the traction. When power is applied to the driving sprocket, the link track is drawn around the pontoon. But since the grouser links are firmly held in the compressed snow and cannot move, the exerted force slides the frictionless pontoon along the snow surface.