(I have been sharing “Joys of the Public Domain” and “Treasures of the Creative Commons” on my Twitter feed for a while. They’re just things (mostly pictures) that I’ve stumbled across and enjoyed. Expect more random collections like this in the future!)
My office window looks out over the Mississippi River bluffs; today the view is obscured by a gentle-but-blinding (5-7″ expected accumulation) snowfall. Road crews across the state and the Upper Midwest are still at work digging out from a bigger storm 10 days ago, so I had snowplows on my mind as I headed to The Commons on Flickr this morning.
Since many public domain images are fairly old, the niftiest plows I found were those used to clear railway lines. Check these out:
Snow Plow and Alberta Railway And Irrigation Company Engines 22 And 25 At Warner, Alberta. 1909. From the Galt Museum and Archive‘s Collection.
O&W Snow Plow #3, circa 1880. From the Cornell University Library Collection.
(O&W apparently refers to the New York, Ontario & Western Railway.)
And most spectacularly: 
“Effect of three engines & snow plough charging a five feet drift of snow at Altnabreac, Caithness.” By James Johnston. 1895. Collection of the National Archives, UK.
After exploring the public domain images for a bit, I got curious to see if the technologies have changed over time. In some ways, not so much…
The Mighty Plows. CC by Orin Zebest.
But in other ways… 
World’s Heaviest Snowplow. CC by-nd Chuck “Caveman” Coker.
Here’s another angle on one of these “rotary plow” things!
Snow eater train. CC by-sa Nelson Minar.
So much to be learned from and shared in the public domain and the Creative Commons. I’m very thankful for both!
Wow, great pictures. I had no idea there were train plows, would hate to end up in front of one of those!