Reporter’s photo quiz: What Is That? Oct. 24, 2026

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Roger McKeon was first onboard to ID last week’s mystery photo (see below) that everyone driving into the North Ferry’s Greenport lot sees. “Its Jaws III, the snowplow displayed on the track by the Railroad Museum in Greenport,” Roger emailed us. And Ed Hydeman was right behind him: “The old train engine with a plow in the rail yard in Greenport.” Young David Klenawicus Jr., who is an avid reader of the Reporter’s weekly photo quiz, got on the What Is That Express with, “It’s the LIRR shark bite locomotive.” And Jennifer Allen was right on … the train.

On Facebook Suzzane E. Tulino had her ticket punched correctly, and the photo brought back happy memories for Cynthia Michalak: “The train at the museum in Greenport. I think it was used to clear the snow off the tracks years ago. I loved the train station to pick up coffee before heading into the city on a commuter train.”

We asked Don Fisher, president of the Railroad Museum of Long Island for some more information. The railroad snowplow ‘JAWS,’ was retired from service in 1986 and relocated to the Museum at Greenport. It was created and fabricated by skilled craftsmen of the LIRR at the Morris Park Shops. The exact date the snowplow was built has been lost to time, but it was created in the early 1900’s by assembling a steel VEE plow, salvaged from a LIRR 1800’s wooden snowplow that had burned. The plow was used extensively during 20th-century winters to clear the railroad tracks on the North and South forks. Snow blowing off farm fields, Mr. Fisher said, would fill the ‘cuts’ the LIRR tracks ran through. ‘Snow would drift right across the cuts, being as high as the top of the plow in some places,’ he said. ‘The only way to open the train track was to have a locomotive shove the VEE snowplow through the drifts.’

The unique painting of shark teeth and the moniker ‘Jaws’ happened in 1978. “Each year the snowplow would be brought in for maintenance and painting,” Mr. Fisher said. “Following the popularity of the 1975 movie, the shop workers decided to paint the teeth on the snowplow.”