Logging train on its way to tide water , very economical way to transport logs ! Loads waiting to go at the RELOAD !All second growth (winter Shows ). Yes and I know there is no snow. The Reload ,and the A Frame .There are four in the operation , these transfer stations are spaced in such a way that in most cases the truck turn around time from the loader and back on average is around 1 hour , allowing the trucks to haul 4/5 loads per day. Start of a load transfer.Truck driving into the reload to have its load transferred ,this is known as under the GUN . I believe this truck and railroad hauling system inside of one operation , has become very unique in that there is no longer another like it . These second growth loads weigh on average around 50 tons . Transfer complete . Loading the trailer .
One thing I did not mention . The the tracks at all the reloads are laid out on a slight grade so the cars roll downhill as they are being loaded , so only gravity is needed no power . The decent is controlled by a 1 1/2 in cable from a drum and its brake on the reload machine , a five drum machine.
I was wondering how they got around not needing to keep an engine and crew on standby as the cars were loaded.
Thanks for posting all those pictures and info... Very cool stuff indeed! Ahhhhh, what 99% of the general public never even gets to see or has a clue... I like it Bet some real good folks working there as well.. My kind of people
It was a very good place to work. On a whole, every one looked out for each other! If you did not have a nickname! It took years to figure out what some of the real names were, and I got tagged with "The Rev" It seems the mike button got stuck in transmit mode for several hours one day and I was happily singing hymns for that period!
The above pictures taken over the last 2 years! These 2 pictures were taken Halloween 1994. Not one of my better days. A section of older road gave way. The funniest part to this story is that my steel thermos had a cup like holder just below the side window and as the loader went into the inverted position, the thermos came out of the holder, fell across the cab, collided with the on/off toggle switch for the Cummings engine, turning it off! The whole thing happened in slow motion so I just walked out and over the side of the cab and across the tires onto the ground before it went inverted. It was just a little bit of a struggle trying to go uphill as the remainder of the road bed slide down bank! The loader was on its way from its active days of production heading to the happy hunting ground for old loaders. It stayed in this position for almost 6 months. The company had put out the word that if someone wanted the machine that they could have it for the price of doing the recovery! After about 6 months, it was discovered by Fisheries which informed the company that they had 2 days to remove it or the whole operation was going to be shut down until it was removed. My reward. I was given an almost new logging truck to drive! Air ride seat & cab! This picture was taken by a friend in about 1995/1996!
Very awesome. That must have been a cool job Alan. Jealous. I like love working with equipment. Always impressed with what we can build to help us get things done. Hydraulics are amazing.
The standard joke for inverted machinery .Was ! You were supposed to do the grease job , well anyhow !
Thanks again for sharing these pics. No place else can we see these from someone who actually lived it.
These pictures were taken this morning. The Cable that lowers the cars. It's winter time with the possibility of snow, so at quitting time on Friday, 2 loaded cars were left attached to the empty string. Any amount of snow and the empty cars will not roll on their own so the extra weight of the loaded car supply the extra weight needed to get the empties to roll plus the loaded cars cover the switches. Saves the reload crew a whole pile of shoveling snow. The three tracks that the cars are lowered down onto. For the two outside tracks, the car brakes are manually set and the spotting line is muscled out to the big turning block. Depending on the size of loads, between 10 & 12 loaded cars can be lowered at one time. Four tracks of empties. The outer track has cars for boom sticks which are 66' long. Again these tracks are on just a slight incline. The big steel bars are known as torpedoes which slide under the load on the logging truck, the eyes (loops) go over the torpedo ends and the load is lifted in one shot onto the railway car. There is also a load cell in the lifting set up that weighs the load for scale and stumpage rates. The first 2 cars are loaded with boom sticks 66' long. The white lettering is the setting number of where the load came from. On average, there is 10 or 12 logs on a boom stick load for an average weight of 45/55 ton load. Some very nice logs. Nice looking train!
Kinda good, I guess, that you got tagged with The Rev. At least they didn't tag you with Sister. And thanks for all the pics and descriptions and the like. Very cool stuff Rev.
Very Cool pictures. So is the railroad a separate company that charges by the pound for hauling the logs or are they weighing for safety/load capacity reasons?
Western Forest Products owns the railroad and the logging operation. In the USA I believe all timber lands are privately owned ? In this province most timber lands are owned by the government and are broken down into Tree Farms. The Engelwood Logging Division is a Tree Farm License manged by Western. The load cell records the weight of every load for royalty or stumpage rates that the company pays the Government for the logs . There are 4 engines like this one. I first remember seeing them for the first time in about 1956/58 ! Some of the rail cars being used are also closer to if not a 100 years old . Over the years different mangers have talked of going to logging truck haul only , but every time the numbers get crunched the rails always stays .
Stop it with these logging railroad pictures please, you are making me want to build a model railroad layout. Do you have any pictures on the unloading side? Do they just dump the logs into the water of do they sort/grade/pre-process and send the mill segregated loads? As for US logging, much was done on public lands until recently when environmental concerns won out. (A discussion of which would quickly turn political.) It pretty much has ceased now. I believe that it was mostly done on a contract. The Forest Service or BLM or whichever agency controlled the land decided how many MBF of lumber and tons of pulp there was and put it out to bid on that basis.
