# Questions; Narrow Gauge Logging fans,



## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

Two questions in my mind I hope folks can answer.

I stumbled into a eBay 2-8-0 Connie that I wasn't looking for that has now become my new project with the livery of Yellow Pine Lumber Co. and am in the process of cleaning up the chewed up drive gearing with NWSL gearbox and axle gear replacements.

Question One: I kind of thought the Yellow Pine Lumber Co. was in Mobile AL. After some research i find Yellow Pine Lumber Companies in NC, LA, TX and maybe one in WA state. Can anyone give me a hint what the Bach-man had in mind when they came up with that model? Or is it a generic moniker that they just threw out there?

Question Two: I'm also kind of planning on building disconnect logging cars [cause they look cooler than flat car or skeleton car log cars to me] and I've seen other folks on this site build them from Hartford Loco Products but I'm not going with the 45 dollar kits Hartford has. I ordered [4] HLW mini-flats from Wholesale Trains for 9 bucks a piece and hope to kit bash them into [2] disconnects, I was originally planning on using link and pin couplers from Ozark minatures or Hartford but was wondering if logging operations by the 1940s were using knuckle couplers and should I just go with Kadee or some other coupler and be happy with knuckle couplers?


----------



## Andre Anderson (Jan 3, 2008)

Greetings,

As to question number one, I personally have no clue as to which one they were thinking of.


Question number two I can give a go at, if you are modeling the 1940's I would stay with flat cars or skeleton's. The disconnect was pretty much dead by 1910 to 1920, for several reasons, first a train of disconnects were made up of 4 to 6 sets of trucks, second most if not all logging shows had gone to cars with air brakes by 1920 at least out west, most logging lines were pulling trains of 14 to 24 or more cars and the disconnect truck just could not deal with these kind of pulling forces, fourth they tended to come apart at the worst possible moment if you were not using roosters. When just using the trucks them selves, and you started a train of cars all of the pulling forces were transmitted from truck to truck by the logs and friction, yes there may have been chains over the logs but they would have only been good for about 20,000 lbs of pull before they failed, you can see what would happen you pull on the first car snap the chain and just yank it out from under the log and your were back to square one and having to reload the log onto the disconnect truck, this would not have been a problem if you were at the loading deck but if you were out on the line the you were just







well you get the idea. Some disconnects did use knuckle couplers but generally they would have used link and pin couplers so you could use a rooster to keep the train together. A rooster was either a wooden beam or length of chain that had a links on each end that could be fitted into the couplers. The roosters transmit the pulling forces between the trucks so you did not rely on the friction of the logs on the bunks to keep your train together. One of the more important reasons that the disconnect died was braking, with the disconnect the brakeman had to run along side of the train to apply and release the brakes because the brakes on just the locomotive would not have enough to handle the train where as with a skeleton or a flat car you would have regular air brakes that could be applied and released from the locomotive greatly reducing the chance of a run away. Just about every logging show out west piled one of its locomotives under a train of logs at least once due to a runaway with usually several people killed.


----------



## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

Yellow Pine could be in all those states. Companies would buy stands of trees and then go in and set up shop and cut 'em down. This could include laying rails to get there. 

John


----------



## cape cod Todd (Jan 3, 2008)

Hi SRW 
I agree the logging disconnects do look cool. I have a set of the LGB ones that use the link and pin but they can be expensive so making your own sounds like a great idea. It is true what Andre wrote but hey our little trains don't' have brakes so unless your trying to replicate the prototype just run what you like. Logging companies would buy a section of land or the trees on it and wring every last penny out of it and usually leave the logged out area a disaster. Keeping with this practise the smallest amount of money spent on equipment meant more profits for the owner. 
Have fun 
Todd


----------



## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

Thanks for the thoughts on the existence of the real Yellow Pine Lumber Co. on the Bachmann Connie. In a way that gives me license to do what I want with it. 

Good points on the disconnects too Andre. I can't imagine trying to actually use and keep things from flying apart in real operation and being a brakeman running along side the disconnects to apply the brakes sounds like a a very short lived career choice. Still, they look darned cool and since I don't have to worry about if the actual Yellow Pine Lumber Co. used cars like that I can twist reality anyway I want to. I planned on running them with the Rooster bar in between the two trucks with link and pin couplers. Like these pictured on the Hartford product catalog: 

http://www.mbv-schug.de/PDF/HARTFORD.pdf 

I've also seen some cool mods for Knuckle couplers that were cut and drilled to pull link and pin couplers yet still hook up with cars that had knuckle couplers on this website under a "link and pin coupler" topic thread. Might be cool to try that or real cool to install a link and pin coupler on the tender that accepts a Kadee coupler modfied to couple up with a pin like one modeler fabricated. 
With the HLW mini flats costing me 10 bucks a piece that's 20 bucks per car. Add in link and pin couplers or make my own and making the disconnects will be about as cheap as buying the Bachmann skeleton log cars and then spending money making changes I would want to them. It should be a fun project. I appreciate the insights here...as always


----------



## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

If you want to make your own links, here's a handy tip to make them uniform in size. Cut the head off a nail and solder it to another the same size. Drill a hole into one nail, near the end, the size of your wire plus a tad. Stick the wire in the hole and wrap the wire around your armature. Keep the tension tight and use a soft wire. Coil the wraps tight together. Use a seperating disc in a dremmel and slice down one side between the nails, but not through the solder.. After you've cut them slide them off the armature and using pliers with a slight push to close to kerf, bring the ends together. Slide them back and forth to overcome springiness. Solder closed. 

I believe it was the Janey coupler that was slotted for links. You could make a J pin that hooks over the top of the coupler from the inside when the knuckle is closed. The only mod is the slot. You want the J so the pins stays put and doesn't decorate the roadbed... 

John


----------



## armorsmith (Jun 1, 2008)

Roosters were commonly made from timbers with strap iron loops on the ends or scrap sections of rail with holes drilled in the ends. 

If you are interested in scratch building some bunks, I have a pdf of some I would be willing to share. Contact me off list if you are interested. 

Bob C.


----------



## Dwight Ennis (Jan 2, 2008)

I've also seen some cool mods for Knuckle couplers that were cut and drilled to pull link and pin couplers yet still hook up with cars that had knuckle couplers on this website under a "link and pin coupler" topic thread.
I slotted and drilled the Kadee #1 couplers on my logging caboose. There isn't a lot of meat there so the knuckle has to be drilled out at the bend, and only a very small hole will work, requiring making pins from brass wire (probably 0.015to 0.020), but it works.


----------



## docwatsonva (Jan 2, 2008)

I don't know if this will be of any help but here's a coupler modification I made to a LGB Porter conversion a few years back.  It allows the Porter to pull cars with either L&P or knuckle couplers.
 
I used one of Ozark's L&P 2-slot pockets and a Kadee 789 knuckle.  I had to file down the top and bottom of the coupler tongue a little to fit into the pocket slot.  I also had to put a styrene sleeve into the coupler tongue to make the pin hold the kuckle tighter.
 
Here's a couple of photos:
 








 
 
 








 
 
Doc


----------



## cape cod Todd (Jan 3, 2008)

Hello SRW 
On a recent trip to New Hampshire I came across a static display of an old logging engine with 2 disconnects behind it. The display is in front of the entrance to Loon mountain. I have some photos of the disconnects and the link and pins I could email you if you would like to see them. [email protected]


----------



## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

Thanks for the link and pin diy advice. I downloaded a nice pdf from this site on making your own l&p couplers with rectangular styrene. Looked cool but I think I may just order ozark l&p couplers and make my own rooster bar to connect them. The great photos Doc and Dwight included were the ones I had seen earlier and I like both of those ideas a lot. May build a variation of Doc's link pin and Kadee coupler insert. Looks cool. I wonder if it stays coupled to the first car pretty well when running with the knuckle insert in place. 
I had even kicked around making a skeleton type log car with the 2 HLW mini flats disconnects as the trucks for it. Kind of combining the disconnect truck idea with Hartford's Russel No.2 skeleton log car riding on top of the two trucks. Wouldn't need a rooster bar that way, the cars would be pretty easy to make and you could sell the idea as a hypothetical evolutionary step between disconnect and skeleton log cars using what they may already have had on hand to make skeleton log cars. We'll see when I get the 9.99 mini flats in the mail what they suggest they want to be to me.


----------



## Dwight Ennis (Jan 2, 2008)

...and you could sell the idea as a hypothetical evolutionary step... I wouldn't worry about selling anything when it comes to logging as there was probably a prototype for almost anything. These were individually owned and operating companies whose main concern was getting the logs to the sawmill as cheaply and efficiently as possible. Most were not common carriers and were therefore not subject to the Government regulations imposed on mainline railroads - hence the survival of link and pin couplers and hand brakes long after they'd been phased out elsewhere. Most also didn't interchange equipment with other roads and so didn't have to standardize. They operated hundreds of miles from nowhere and made do with whatever they had on hand. Ingenuity and resourcefulness were their watchwords and each road did things pretty much as they saw fit with whatever was readily available. For the logging modeler, that allows for a huge amount of latitude.


----------



## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

Good thoughts Dwight. Model railroaders are all essentially little 'spin doctors', even the most prototypical rivet counter has to make the occasional intuitive leap to model the side of the rail car or the side of a freight station, etc. that doesn't have a photo or drawing of it to look at and guess what may have gone where. Good training for this goes back to my teenage years and my experiences formulating 'explanations' for a new and unwanted alteration to the bodywork or the front end alignment of the family car, or creating my side of the story after the principal phoned my parents regarding an 'alleged' infraction that the very best 'explanations' were the ones with a fair basis in the truth. Later on in life I had some older guys teach me about low voltage wiring on homes that our company did for home theatre/stereo construction prewires tell me that if you just didn't leave anything looking glaringly wrong whether it was to code or not that the inspector usually wouldn't scrutinize things too closely. I like your Santa Cruz site which I will inspect further this evening and see that it too had a real life counterpart as a basis for it. Nice stuff from what little I checked it out so far. 

I had a bunch of photos printed out of the Hartford log car models and some other logging car photos and if I squinted my eyes a bit I could envision a hybrid between the disconnect trucks and skeleton log cars i had photos of. Since I couldn't resist the cheap HLW mini flats for the price I found them then that's probably going to be the story I stick with...for now. Like everything else in RR modeling...it can always be changed later on.


----------



## Dwight Ennis (Jan 2, 2008)

Thanks. The Santa Cruz Lumber Co, like it's prototype, was long ago torn out. It survives now only on the web site (though the rolling stock still exists). Lotsa fun while it lasted though and a real education and learning experience both in large scale outdoor railroading and in prototype logging equipment and practices.


----------



## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

My father was self employed as a consulting forester in Maryland from the late 50's 'til his death in '82. My brothers and I grew up working with him in the woods and riding around with him throughout the state to inspect logging jobs after he'd sold the timber to a logger to see that the logging went as contracted. I always enjoyed watching the big skidders [totally cool, powerful machines any boy would give his eye teeth to get a chance to drive and that I got to actually do once], crunching their way through the woods dragging logs back to the loading clearings to be craned onto trucks. I remember the home made logging truck bodies that loggers still used in the 70's and also all of their unique and individual sawmills, not one of them the same, running custom made saws, gas and diesel engines for power, whatever they could come up with, pulley's run off of driveshafts to cut off saws and planers, etc, so on. All personally engineered and built with ingenuity, torches, nuts and bolts, sweat and probably some tears. It was neat. I still get powerful memories when I visit one today and smell all of that freshly cut timber and wood chips and sawdust and diesel fuel and grease. WHAT A FABULOUS SMELL!!! All individual aromas, Red oak, White Oak, Walnut, Pine, etc,. Heady to me, better even than inhaling fine wines. 
Those operations have few photos of their existence just as old logging operations had. Nothing glamorous to the folks who ran them so...few photos of it all. All going the way of the DoDo bird.


----------



## up9018 (Jan 4, 2008)

Logging can be addictive....I started with a NG line with a logging branch...now I'm planning a complete logging RR with a NG branch..... 

Lots of fun in logging railroads. 

Chris


----------



## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

Getting off topic here [kind of, logging railroads made clear cutting possible], but the bumper sticker on my Father's International Scout said "Trees are America's Renewable Resource". I live in Johnson City at the base of the Smokies. When any of my friends visits me and we drive over to Asheville I point to these hills and say; "these mountains were COMPLETELY harvested of trees in the last one hundred years, nothing left, bare ground, stubble,...LOOK AT THEM NOW! Our grandfathers and great grandfathers harvested EVERYTHING. They burned a lot of it for fuel too, or for tan bark and other things we don't harvest trees for now. Not the way we do things today...and still...Mother Nature has forgiven us. My Father preached to me the difference between selectively harvesting mature trees and clear cutting. He also told me many years ago about the potential fire hazards of total preservation. He told me putting out every forest fire would bite us in the ass too...as we've seen out west. Nature has vindicated his views to me. She will shake our demolition off like a bad cold and come back every time. Even if humans ultimately prove to be a passing phase, this planet will be covered in trees.


----------



## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

mini flat and roosters.... dream on









John


----------



## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

Thanks John. Cool old photo. 

Todd Haskins sent me four photos today which included the tank engine at the entrance to Loon Mt. Resort in NH. It's got a disconnect coupled behind it and I swear it looks like the exact model for the HLW mini flat. All I'd need to do is fabricate the metal beams, chains, and rooster bar and add l&p couplers, and brakes all available on line and I could assemble the exact cars. If I can figure how to upload the photos or create a link to them I'll share them. It includes a nice close up of the couplers and a great 3/4 view of one of the trucks. Good reference photos!


----------



## RimfireJim (Mar 25, 2009)

Those operations have few photos of their existence just as old logging operations had. Nothing glamorous to the folks who ran them so...few photos of it all. 
West coast logging actually has a pretty decent level of photographic documentation that has made its way into books. My personal favorite is _Railroads of the Woods_ (Labbe & Goe), a copy of which I picked up in a bookstore when I was a teenager in the '70s. I think it was what hooked me on logging railroads (I was already a train nut and model railroader). More recently, I've added the following to my library: _Pino Grande: Logging railroads of the Michigan-California Lumber Co_ (R. Stephen Polkinghorn), _Logging railroads of the West_ (Kramer A Adams), _Glory Days of Logging/Action in the Big Woods, British Columbia to California_, _This Was Logging_ and _This Was Sawmilling_, (Ralph W. Andrews). There are many more, I just had to draw the line somewhere (temporarily)! 
A quick browse on Amazon shows that there are a number of books dealing with logging railroads in other parts of the country, too, including the Southeast.


----------



## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

Thanks Jim, I stand corrected on the amount of photographs available of logging operations and will research those titles further. My oldest brother who has studied the logging and narrow gauge railroad topic for about three decades probably has some of, or has maybe borrowed the titles you mention. He lent me a really good book on the Little River Logging operation a few months back, which wasn't too far south from where I live. "Whistle Over the Mountain" I think the title was and I enjoyed the book very much. I plan to pick his brain on this very subject when he gets back home from traveling. 

Here's a link to some of the photos from the Little River museum, including some shots of their 2-4-4-2 Baldwin Mallet if you care to check them out. They had a 2-6-2 that I passingly wondered if a Bachman Big Hauler couldn't be kitbashed to model also but the drivers on the bug mauler may be set too far back under the cab to do it easily:

http://www.littleriverrailroad.org/photos.htm


----------



## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

Universities and Historical societies also have online pics. 
Google Images also provide links to the source of their pics. Close the pic, not page will open the source. I often find better pics tucked away. 

The pic above came from google. 

John


----------



## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

Good point John! 

Here in Johnson City the ETSU archives have lots of photos of railroading. Not just the Tweetsie, Southern, and Clinchfield which all ran through town but also Cass and other rrs. I've found them under the Archives of Appalachia when looking things up in the past. I think there may be a greater effort by universities and other organizations to try and make these images and documents more internet accessible. It takes money to do that so those things are slow to see the light of the internet. 

Also there are other neat websources like this one on my town which can have lots of RR photos and historical info. too. It's a fascinating website of Johnson City and east Tennessee and yes, if you look far enough on it, folks here abouts did actually hang a homicidal elephant, "Murderous Mary", in Erwin TN in 1916 using a railroad crane. Nothing like a good lynching eh?

http://www.johnsonsdepot.com/index.htm

If you want the salacious elephant hanging story just go here: 

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~tnunicoi/mary.htm


----------



## SteveC (Jan 2, 2008)

You might want to check out the following, after accessing the web site, in the 'Search All Collections:' type in the search value logging and click the 'Go' button. You should get about 37± pages of photographs.

Washington State University Libraries Digital Photograph Collection[/b]


----------



## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

Yup Steve, one of my favorites. Great Grand Dad was a friend of Mr Weyehauser many moons ago. The family always had a soft spot for that company. Los of Weyerhauser history in there. 
John


----------



## RimfireJim (Mar 25, 2009)

folks here abouts did actually hang a homicidal elephant, "Murderous Mary", in Erwin TN in 1916 using a railroad crane. 
Now _that's_ a bizarre story! That would create quite the unusual vignette on a garden railroad. Nobody would believe you when you tried to tell them it is a model of something that really happened.


----------



## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

Wow, just logged on to upload images from this afternoon's kitbashing and saw that archive Steve shared the link to. I think you could spend days surfing around on that one! 

and you're so right Jim, hanging a rogue elephant with a railroad crane is probably the strangest story and photo for the use of crane I've ever come across. I don't think Clinchfield advertised their 'lynching' services widely. 

Afternoon appointment rained out, home at lunchtime, HLW mini flats on the doorstep, thank you very much FedEx....Hmmm, what to do, what to do? Find someway to turn the afternoon into a profitable activity? Nah!! Let's play with trains!! 

I opened the HLW mini flats, put one of the four of them together, made some measurements, fired up the bandsaw, whipped the 5 minute epoxy up and my four disconnect trucks practically built themselves. They are still long ways from being finished, I need to order some l&p couplers, build two rooster bars, decide what type of brakes to build but Gosh! It basically took me longer to upload the photos than it did to do this much towards converting mini-flats into disconnects. I hope you can check out the photos of what's done to this point sitting on the track on my basement test loop. For 9.99 a mini flat kit these log disconnects should end up each costing less than 30 couple bucks to build. Now I need to get the bow saw out and go walk in the woods looking for suitable scale log loads. If this doesn't work as a link then copy and paste it in your browser url bar and that should work. 

The first two photos are the ones Todd Haskins sent me from the entrance to Loon Mt. resort in NH which have become my muse more or less. 


http://s762.photobucket.com/albums/xx267/flatrat62/Logging disconnects/

http://s762.photobucket.com/albums/...&current=LogDisconnectsNHToddHaskinsphoto.jpg


----------



## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

Question: 

Log lengths in the 'old days'. 

When i worked with my Father in the 'modern' logging industry logs were cut and loaded [often] in roughly 16' lengths from the woods. Handy to put on a log truck, drive to the mill and to turn into 16 to 8 foot lumber there. 

Now that I'm looking at disconnect and skeleton log car pictures i'm trying to figure out what log lengths they used to cut logs and load them onto cars in during the railroad logging days. When I scale things out to figure out visually as to what looks right with my disconnects to figure out how long to build my Rooster bar, depending on whether I figure it out 1:20, 1:22, 1:24 it all comes out looking like about 24 foot long logs riding on the trucks. Being a multiplier of 8 foot saw lengths I wonder if that was a common log length {?} Anybody?


----------



## RimfireJim (Mar 25, 2009)

Log lengths were all over the place in the West coast logging operations, but there seems to be an inverse diameter/length ratio to consider. Probably a weight & handling issue as much as anything. The longest logs I've seen photos of were for pilings - they were so long they almost dragged on the ties mid-span. There was one company in Washington that was renowned for these loads. Benson, I think it was? The shortest I've seen were huge diameter logs, something like 12-16 feet. (Most PNW "shows" were standard gauge; I doubt if a NG line would handle that big of a log.) 

From what little I've seen of it, hardwood logging in the SE is totally different: smaller logs and shorter. Even modern western logging of 2nd/3rd growth timber uses longer lengths than what you describe: the truck loads look to be in the 30' range.


----------



## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

Thanks Jim. The photos I've been finding on line this week had lead me to the same conclusion of modelling the type of lumber found in whatever area. The log loads I remember in Maryland were usually on straight frame single or maybe double axle trucks. The timber in that area wasn't all that huge with Poplar being the tallest species I recall. They usually wouldn't harvest anything smaller in diameter than 18" at breast height in hardwood but if it was pulpwood it can be pretty small in diameter. 
I saw some old photos of the EB&L that was using the disconnects I'm modeling a few days back. The cars had logs in them that were small in diameter but varied greatly in lengths. They were using rooster bar links, not to hold the trucks together under each load but to couple the seperate loads together and the longest logs were like you mentioned, hanging 10 feet or more off each end and practically touching the rooster bars. Basically, anything goes for a model log load it would seem.


----------



## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

Depends on their use as to lengths, that plus the type of equipment the RR used,



















Screwy photo editor... first pic was supposed to be last, hence my script is in the middle...
In the last pic these logs are to be pilings. 
It's possible that the customer decided the lengths.

John


----------



## PapaPerk (Nov 7, 2009)

Wow! I've never seen them pull logs that long! Reminds me of a tractor trailer hauling telephone poles. 

Thanks for sharing!


----------

