So,- your into logging!

shamus

Registered Member
Just wondering. What got you started in logging. I myself started around 5 years ago with just a logging spur (One track) off my HO "Raton Snake Valley" layout. A bit later I had another layout called "Beaver & Timber Springs" which was part logging and part main line with loads of industries. Then the Logging Bug hit hard and "Badger Creek was born (All logging) followed by--- "Red Fox Lumber Company" -- again, all logging. BUT then 0n30 came along and ---- well, you know the rest of this story, my "Cooncreek &Tumbleweed Springs" was born, GEE, this hobby really gets the juices flowing.
Shamus
dunk.jpg

 

camelot

Member
My Wife bought me a Lifelike starter trainset one xmas , after playing arround with it , i bought the 1999 Model Railroader Best Layouts magazine , on the cover was Geoff Knotts brilliant HO logging layout Leigh Creek Lumber Company.

Even after that it took a while to catch on , having a relitively small layout space of 6' x 4', i soon realized that i could only run smaller trains and rolling stock .Remembering Geoff layouts i did a search for Logging layouts on the internet and came across a little know layout called Badger Creek .

After that i reasearched the locos , sent an email to Paul and got some feedback ( he probably dosn't remember me ;-p) bought a Bachman shay,MD climax and off i went , never looked back.

The more and more i found info about this industry , the more i really enjoyed the vintage era of logging and all the unusual contraptions that came along with it.

Being the only logging modeler at the local club i always seem to attract some stares, usuallly along with the phrase "what the hell is that" !!

Cheers

Ian

Perth
Western Australia
 

Attachments

  • 000_2332.jpg
    000_2332.jpg
    47.3 KB · Views: 278

Brunob1

New Member
I think my interest in logging started in the Adirondak Mtns. in north eastern New York State. I spend a lot of time there. There is a museum called the Blue Mountain Lake Museum. They have a lot of space didicated to logging in the northeast. Got a lot of information there. On a subsequent trip to New York City I bought a PFM (I think) Heisler and I was hooked on the variety. innovation and interst of logging.:)
 

shamus

Registered Member
Originally posted by camelot

.Remembering Geoff layouts i did a search for Logging layouts on the internet and came across a little know layout called "Badger Creek" .

After that i reasearched the locos , sent an email to Paul and got some feedback ( he probably dosn't remember me ;-p)
Hi Ian, Yes, how could I not remember a fellow logging nut:D
Cheers
Shamus
 

Summit

New Member
Grew up in the mountains of Northeastern California, about fifteen miles outside of the timber town of Burney, CA. Became fascinated with the McCloud River Railroad, and got the logging bug while digging into it's history as well as visiting old McCloud log camps and roadbeds.

Interests further cemented while in college at Humboldt State Unviersity in Arcata, CA...did some work on the two Marshutz & Cantrall 0-4-0T locomotives at Fort Humboldt State Park in Eureka.

Am interested in "wet side" loggers, but my true interest is in the dry side loggers (Ponderosa pine country).

That's my story...

JD Moore
Elko, NV
http://www.trainweb.org/mccloudrails

P.S. Paul...glad to see you joined the 4L list. You'll fit in well there.
 

lassenlogger

New Member
RE: Why Logging!

Well, I’d always been a sort-of-independent soul. So, when I graduated from high school with less then the best grades and a SAT score that would allow me Sacramento State or Fresno State, and on a middle son’s budget, options are: Junior College or Junior College.

When you grow up in Palo Alto, California you’re expected to go to college. There was no way that I was going to stay home to attend a high school with ashtrays! Bye-Bye Foothill JC!

Having had a wonderful time in Idaho with a GS5 Forest Service fellow cleaning camp grounds and such on family visits to the family’s vacation ranch, the decision was easy. Especially after riding around in a green pickup with government plates and visiting with folks on vacation, it seemed just a great job, even if you have too; empty trash, wipe tables, police the area for litter, clean outhouses, cut firewood and such.

At that time, Lassen Junior College was the only outfit in California offering a TECH-Forestry degree. So, I transferred.

Eventually, after graduation, not in the forestry field, I found myself in the forest cutting firewood. And this was my introduction to railroad logging, when I found rail grades in the woods!

About ten years later, with a good job in hand (house payment was about 16 % of my monthly income); I decided it was time for a hobby (mostly the rich and some upper middle class folks have time and money for a hobby). Always enjoyed the forest, the same with history, and my love of railroads had always been there too.

So, that is why I enjoy logging history. Maybe, I’ll get back to modeling, which I enjoy too!

The “Wet Side” and “Coast of California (Redwoods)” is interesting, but alas I’m a “dry side” guy, just a pine logger at heart enjoying the mountain weather shadow, east of the Cascades and Sierra!

Jimmy “B”
Speeder.jpg
 

lassenlogger

New Member
Re: Why Logging

Drew,

I’m glad you liked the photo. I’m happy to be here on this board. I will be posting additional photos from time to time.

The photo I posted was taken by Clark Kinsey and was commissioned by the Fruit Growers Supply Company, the buying arm of the California Fruit Growers Exchange now known as Sunkist, the citrus folks.

The speeder changed railroad logging. No longer did a timber operator have to move camp, which was expensive, now they where able to move the men to the cutting area in an efficient an economical manner from a HQ camp.

The photo dates between 1928 and 1932 and was probably taken at Camp 10, which was the last, and longest lived camp operated by the “Supply” company’s Lassen Operation.

You might find this trivia of interest, since your model railroad is loosely based on the McCloud operation. In 1950, and maybe a year or so earlier, the “Supply” company was planning on building a railroad from Poison Lake on the Western Pacific’s NCE to Burney. If this had been done the “Supply” company was going to hire the McCloud River Railway to operate it.

Jimmy “B”
 

shamus

Registered Member
Hi Jimmy, thats a great photo, was Clark Kinsey a relative of the famous Darius Kinsey who photographed many logging area's.
shamus
 
Cool

Thanks "B", I didn't know that.

I'll make sure that my sawmill is making the wood required for the 'supply' company!!:cool: :cool:

Have you met Summit yet?

Drew
 

Summit

New Member
Drew-

LassenLogger and I live about 280 miles from each other...we correspond over e-mail quite a bit and get together a couple times a year to switch boxcars...

I've got some discussion on my website about the relationship between the McCloud River Lumber Company (and Railroad), the Red River Lumber Company, and the Fruit Growers Supply Company. Most of the discussion surrounding the Burney Tract can be found on the following page:

http://www.trainweb.org/mccloudrails/History/History05.html

Hope this helps.

-JD Moore
Elko, NV
 
Originally posted by shamus
Just wondering. What got you started in logging.

Back in the late '60's and early '70's, a friend of my dad's would occasionally host a father-and-son weekend at his cabin near the Nicolet Nat'l Forest at Argonne, Wisconsin. There were fall grouse hunting trips and winter snowmobiling trips. I was awed by the vastness of Wisconsin's northern forests. I had started in HO a few years earlier and had a switching layout along two walls of my bedroom. A RMC cover shot, probably in the early '70's, featuring a John Allen photo of a log loading scene on his fabulous Gorre & Daphetid RR was my initiation to the fact that people actually modeled logging railroad scenes. Then, around 1984, I bought a copy of Frank King's book "Minnesota Logging Railroads" at a local hobby shop. Around the same time, business travel took me into northern Wisconsin, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and northern Minnesota on a regular basis. MDC released their two-truck Shay kit. My conversion to logging fanatic was inevitable from that point on. I am presently building my third layout to feature logging in that same Crandon-Argonne area of northern Wisconsin where I saw my first pulp yards and mill operations so long ago. The Crandon & Northern is a freelanced common carrier owned mainly by forest products interests, among them the Jacobs-Daniels Lumber Co.

And I am still having a blast with it after all these years!!!
--Stu--
 
I've had a lifelong love affair with Missouri's Ozarks. Since logging and railroad tie production were major Ozarks industries until around 1928, a logging-based layout was a natural for me.

At one time, the tiny town of Grandin, Mo., was the home of the world's largest sawmill. It was there that short-leaf yellow pine was turned into lumber and trim for the mansions of some of America's wealthiest familes. And in the spring, when the Osage and Current Rivers were up, the tie hackers would float tens of thousands of hand-hewn oak ties in miles-long rafts down the rivers to "collection points" served by the Missouri Pacific. It's a history that is endlessly fascinating to me. :)
 
Originally posted by jon-monon
How can ya not love the mid-south :D So, Casey, are you modeling some hardwood logging?

Jon, actually hardwood logging is the main focus of my layout planning. I have one tie raft collection point under construction and another planned. It's only been in the last month or so that I have started to think about devoting some space to pine and cedar logging.

One of the things that makes Ozarks logging attractive to me (other than the fact that I live in what used to be the Osage River basin - now it's a huge lake) is that it's quite a bit different from logging in the Pacific Northwest or Michigan or .... ;) It gives me an opportunity to do something that is different from what many other logging modelers do.

One of those interesting little historical notes: Tie hackers hand hewed standard gauge ties from oak trunks using single-bitted broad axes. They were paid 10 cents per tie. A good hacker could produce 8 ties per day. Thus, a farmer with a couple of strong sons could earn $2 - $3 a day and support his family during the winter months by cutting ties.
 

jon-monon

Active Member
Gee, now I feel silly :eek:ops: :eek:ops: :eek:ops: And now I remember what the "T" is for in OVT&L :D:D:D

That is pretty interesting what they did for a buck. What do you think the average teen of today would say if you asked him to chop wood all day and hand the procedes over to daddy? :D :D :D

BTW: Congrats on your NMRA website award! http://homepage.mac.com/michael21/AboutCMS/index.html
:thumb: :thumb: :thumb:
 

Tileguy

Member
STU, I bet you still have that book by Frank King dont ya!!
Great book.cmon up sometime and i'll show you a few of the old grades.Ive got 1 that used to run down from the iron range to the mississipi landing at jacobson just a few miles away.
The GN used a good part of this old line for running ore empties north to kelly lake.the section north of hyw #2.the south section was let go.The guys that ran that line hated it as it was the roughest section of line on the system.They abandoned it in the early sixties.it is now part of the states snowmobile trail system.
I came across an old grade while trout fishing up in the arrowhead country once.Not sure what they were using for power ,but i would have to assume a geared loco as the grade was quite steep.over 6% i would guess on the section i saw.Amazing the stuff they would go through to get a line in somewhere :)
 
Top