Have a Porter or other small loco. You could model this.
Bob give John his own spot " the amazing things John finds "!
That bottom picture looks as if that’s one big a** tree filling that train…(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
Isn’t that how it works, one log=1 train
Devon, not so much round these parts.
David Maynard said:
Devon, not so much round these parts.
We got some big trees in Idaho but not that big.
Those are California redwoods. They would have all been taken if the conservationists hadn’t stepped in and shut the loggers down.
A side note to John’s comment on the California Redwoods. There are two distinct types of redwood trees. The Coast Redwoods and the Giant Sequoia Redwoods. The Coast Redwoods are found on the coast of California and get their water from the thick coastal fogs in central and northern California. The Giant Sequoias get their water from the snow pack on the western side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
My wife and I took a trip to Sequoia National Park in 1974 and on one of the side trips, we visited a huge area of Sequoias that had been felled by loggers in the late 1890’s and very early just after the turn of the 20th century. Every single one of those majestic trees had shattered and were completely useless! Some of these felled trees were estimated to have been taller and bigger in circumference than the Sherman or Grant trees! That’s why Giant Sequoias cannot be used for redwood used in construction. Duh! It was just after this fiasco that Sequoia Nat’l Park was formed to save the remaining stands of Giant Sequoias. The General Sherman tree (the largest Giant Sequoia in the world is located here…300 feet tall and 102 feet in circumference! The General Grant Giant Sequoia is also located in this park. Both of these trees are estimated to be about 3800 years old as are many of the trees in other groves of the park.
I have seen these photos in a book I have and always thought it was funny how in the real world a little Porter could pull a long heavy log train with sections of tree that were bigger and no doubt heavier than it and meanwhile in our little worlds we have big 3 truck shays pulling a handful of log cars.
Both look really cool.
Todd Haskins said:
I have seen these photos in a book I have and always thought it was funny how in the real world a little Porter could pull a long heavy log train with sections of tree that were bigger and no doubt heavier than it and meanwhile in our little worlds we have big 3 truck shays pulling a handful of log cars.
Both look really cool.
Well, in my case its because I don’t have the track length to run a very long train. Also, them log cars are getting expensive. I would pick them up when I found them for $25 each, but now I see them for $40 and $50 each. That’s a bit more then I am willing to pay.
John Bouck said:
I’d like to see the saw they use to cut those things…and the gorilla that loads on the table…(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
I think its amazing they could get those things loaded on railroad cars without breaking the cars. Sitting level is one thing, sliding on, totally different. And if you lifted it to set it down, how did they know the cable was strong enough… Lots of “Dang, that didn’t work”. And “what if”.
OK so I was thinking the ride on guys need to model this wouldn’t a 30 or 40 foot Western Red Ceder chunked up and loaded onto flats scale out about right and look great pulled behind a ride on porter?
Back in the early 1970’s I was with Louisiana Pacific Plywood division in Fort Bragg Ca. Boise Cascade, the other half of the mill, was the Redwood Division. The mill was originally Fort Bragg Redwood Company in 1885, then in 1893 the Union Lumber Company, Boise Cascade 1969, and finally Georgia Pacific in 1973-2002. Boise started harvesting Old Growth high cut stumps. Some of the stumps were over 30’ high. The old time loggers for Union Lumber didn’t have the equipment to harvest them. The stumps were brought in by the Off Highway rigs. Using a D-9 Cat, with a shop built wedge, they split the logs into quarters to be milled.
Ric Golding said:
I think its amazing they could get those things loaded on railroad cars without breaking the cars. Sitting level is one thing, sliding on, totally different. And if you lifted it to set it down, how did they know the cable was strong enough… Lots of “Dang, that didn’t work”. And “what if”.
Well, there was a lot of by guess and by golly, and learning from trial and error. I am amazed that they can place them on the cars, can move them to the mill without the cars toppling over (high center of gravity and all) and that there were mills that could process those logs. I also am amazed at the shear waste that went on. That wedge cut of the tree, in the one picture, would have yielded a decent amount of lumber, for trim and such, but having never seen wedges being transported to mills, I am fairly certain it was just wasted. What the companies harvest now for lumber, back then was simply slash. Trees that were too small to be bothered with, that was just burned.
In the days before locomotives in the woods the big Redwood logs were drilled along their length and black powder charges set to split them in half at the falling/bucking site so the ox teams could move them on the skid roads.
Once the locomotive was introduced, mostly small 0-4-0’s as seen above, the logs were left round because they developed a method of loading the log cars by cross hauling off an elevated roll way. A lot of the time the cross hauling was done by the locomotive with a pilot mounted winch through a series of blocks.
The logs were then split at the mill site because they were far to large for the carriage and head saws in the mill. The first band saw head rig was introduced in the Redwood country in the 1890’s by the above mentioned Union Lumber Company, they were able to handle much larger logs then the circular mills.
Rick
David,
On Weyerhaeuser’s operation waste wood was cut up for camp stoves and heating. Often you’ll see a flat car with an open top and sides like a cattle car for such wood.
The bigger waste was smaller trees knocked down to get at the bigguns.
John