Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 203, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1916 — OVER SNOW TRAILS [ARTICLE]

OVER SNOW TRAILS

“RAILROAD" WORK CALLED A TRIUMPH OF ENGINEERING. Claim That It Has Solved a Problem of the Northwest Lumber Camps Seems to Be Well Founded— How It Operates. One of the problems of the lumber camp In the great flat Northwest Is that of haulage. In fact It Is about the greatest problem. It Is one thing to chop down and saw into lengths a centenarian of the primeval foresL It Is another to transport the lumber to the niilroad line. As the camps move from year to year it is not profitable to build and keep clear of snowdrifts a private line, merely for one season’s product, and then do the same thing all over again the next year. So, until recent years the system has been to load the cut lumber on great sledges, drawn by horses or teams of oxen.

The oxen are very picturesque, but they also are slow, and their capacity is limited, too, and their first cost, together with that of food and wages of the requisite number of men to hundle them, was no- small part of the expense of a camp which was carrying on a large operation. Hence the American engineer got busy once more, and, deciding that the building of a private railroad line was too expensive a proposition for a single season’s operations, he decided to run the trains just the same, dispensing with the tracks —and he did. He built a locomotive which would run over the hard-packed snow of the logging roads, hauling, not a single sledge, but a train of them, and capable of moving 200,000 feet of logs every 24 hours, whereas the same amount of money invested in horses would move only 50,000 feet, or onefourth as much. Enter the cross-country locomotive. Exit the horse and the oxen team. The cross-country logging locomotive looks very much like the common or garden variety of switching engine, with the exception that the front trucks are replaced by sledges, and that around the two driving wheels on each side have been wrapped traction belts with caterpillar treads. The locomotive walks rather than runs, and the ridges in the treads, pressed down by the weight of the engine, obtain perfect traction, even on the hardest ice.

With 200 pounds of steam pressure they develop about 100 horse power, and have a speed of five miles an hour. While it will work over very rough country, It Is most economically operated, of course, over easy grades. In one other respect it differs from the ordinary locomotive. It takes two men to operate it, but one of them is kept busy steering. He sits over the front trucks, swinging the locomotive in the desired direction by means of a iow-geared wheel, very much like that of an automobile truck. The engineer, thus relieved of that responsibility, puts all his attention on the handling of his engine and doubling up on the fireman’s job. Naturally, with a few passages of the sledge trains, grooves become worn over the route, and these, well iced, serve Just as well as rails, so that the trains slip easily along, and do not have to plow a fresh path each trip. With roads well graded and iced the locomotive will handle from 7 to 15 heavy logging sleds with 5,000 or 7,000 feet of logs on each, making as high as 50 miles a day, and doing the work of from 12 to 18 four-horse teams. As only two men comprise the crew, it is easy to be seen that there is a substantial saving in wages. Furthermore, the logging locomotive Is tireless. It is only necessary to provide a shift of crews and run the trains at night as well as in the daytime to Increase the locomotive’s capacity to that of 24 or 36 four-horse teams on the 24-hour basis.