SNOW DRIFTS brought an eastbound train to a halt west of Fairfax before the train was freed Wednesday. Fairfax’s Chicago and North Western depot manager Darrel Benson said an engine went off the tracks between Winthrop and Gibbon Wednesday but was placed back on the tracks by a crane. Cause of that derailment, he said, may be that dirt from open plowed fields is mixing with blowing snow, forming extremely hard drifts over the tracks.

(Photo by Mrs. George Withoff, Journal correspondent)