Thanks to mother nature, I was able to receive my first lesson in winter railroading 101. When working in the extreme cold(10 degrees) and snow, you have to take your time when walking and dealing with the equipment. There was plenty of snow that caused problems when walking and climbing up the freight cars to tie them down. You sink into inches of untouched snow. In normal weather, it takes seconds to get to from one car to another, that is now minutes. Equipment takes on a new lifeless form. Brakes do not like to do their job on the cars when applied right away. Make a couple of reductions and keep pulling. The brakes on the car will heat up sooner and hopefully not later. Most of the times, you will come to a stop. This makes things tougher when switching in yards. Not enough time to drag the cars around to heat up the shoes to grip. A road hogger can put on his first reduction on at speed to get his brakes to heat up pretty quickly. Lucky Guys.....