means but because of the structual detail in the rest of the build it just looks very lacking in the leg area. I have enjoyed this build but am wall1 over the leg area. Just my opinion.[/quote]
Right you are, them legs look improbably spindly. Now my railroad is a fictitious outfit. I have been immersed in logging history since I was a little kid, and much of what you see on my railroad is stuff that I have pulled out of my ***. Mind you. I do try to get the physics involved close and make it something that will work. Often I have made up a design for a machine , a building, or a railroad car, and built it, and later found a nearly exact prototypet. That is my normal modus operendi for modeling. I can pull that off cause I have been looking at historical photos so long, my brain can pull up images that look right.
This Surry Parker project is different from most of my stuff. There is some speculation involved, since I have no plans for the skidder-loader that I am building. I have plans for the simpler loader, and I have fuzzy black and white overall photos of both the simpler loader, and the more complex loader skidder.
These photos seem to indicate that the skidding tower is an addition to the simpler unit to which I have plans, as the frame to the two style units apears to be the same in the fuzzy black and white photos I have used as reference. These photos are in an article on Surry Parkers in the Narrow Gauge and Short line Gazzette (The best model train magazine- period) and in Logging Railroads of South Carolina. I don't own the copyright to these photos so I can't and wond post them here.
What these photos clearly show is that the historical photos of the originals in use have four very spindly looking legs under them. Now keep in mind that these units are petty big, and the spindley legs are bigger in cross section than a cross tie. They were probably cut from clear red or white oak. with the guy wires and tie downs, they won't be exposed to latteral forces, and will be exposed to compression forces only, no tension; and oak is insanely strong under compresion.
If this were one of my seat of the pants models, I'd put bigger or more legs on it, but this is for me, a rare forray into modeling an actual prototype. I have a scale drawing of something very similar drawn by someone who does good work. I got fuzzy black and white photos of units like the ones the drawing is made from, and like the one I'm building. The photos and the drawings agree- THEY HAVE SPINDLY LEGS! I'm trusting my source material, and building the model accordingly. I have had to extrapolate some dimensions, but the legs ain't one of them.
Bill Nelson