Snowfall in Europe regularly causes disruptions, delays and even cancellations. But in some other countries carriers decide to continue driving under very extreme weather conditions. A historical example is the video of a Canadian National Railway freight train running at Salisbury near Quebec in 2015.

Our sister publication Spoorpro asked readers to send in pictures of winter conditions on the rails, and received an email from a reader who pointed out a ride of the Canadian National Railway freight train.

Freight train drives through a wall of snow

In February 2015, a video was posted on YouTube showing this freight train driving through a wall of snow near Salisbury. In the video, the locomotive approaches from a distance, after which it disappears into a deep layer of snow.

The train is briefly seen just before a level crossing, then drives through the snow wall, with the camera filming the spectacle ending up covered in snow.

Train fanatic makes more railway videos

Darren Gordon, who was interviewed by news channel CBC about the spectacular images, recorded the video that has now been viewed more than 22.8 million times on YouTube. “I realised when I started filming that maybe I was a little too close. But once I started recording, it was too late to move”, he said.

Gordon is a train fanatic and often makes videos of trains. “Most of my train videos don’t get watched very often,” he said. “Many of my videos have not even been viewed a hundred times. It surprises me a bit.”