Is this a logging boom?

[crossthedog]

Hi Folks,

I found this in a pile of family photos. It's bigger than it looks at first -- if you look closely you can see my dad, Willard, standing next to it. I'm assuming by the tall first that it was taken here in the northwest somewhere, but I have no idea where this is. What is this thing? Is it a boom for loading logs onto rail cars?

To see full resolution, click it open once, then close it, then open it a second time.

Edit: Now that I look more closely and see the word Weyerhouser, and the pincer hook hanging there, I see that this could not be other than a crane for lifting logs onto the cars. I guess I should amend my question, then, to ask two others. Has anyone ever seen its like? And does anyone know where this magnificent animal is? I'd like to go see it.

-Matt

 

[Ablebakercharlie]

No idea but I have to write that beast should have been in Mad Max Fury Road!

Cool pic!

charles

 

[Track fiddler]

Hi Matt

Looks like a steam timber loader with the Felled timber claw hook on the boom line.  Zooming in it appeared it had a swivel at the base.

Before my time so I'm certainly no expert on that type of equipment.  I do remember seeing an old rusty one similar to that.  It was at an old time sawmill in McGregor Minnesota I seen when I was a Kid. 

My dad used to take me to that Sawmill frequently to watch them rip the logs while he talked to the guys.  I remember watching them replace a tooth on the huge old saw blade one time.

 

Interesting machine

 

 

TF

[crossthedog]

Gosh, when will I learn not to post until after I've done some research first? It's the only remaining Lidgerwood Tower Skidder in existence. It was here in the Pacific Northwest at Camp Six, a logging museum, but when that place closed it was dismantled and moved to Willits, California, around 2011.

It's described here: https://rootsofmotivepower.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Roots-Of-Motive-Power-Highline-2011-December-Vol-29-03.pdf

[PC101]

crossthedog

Gosh, when will I learn not to post until after I've done some research first?

 

If you would have done the research first and found your answers then you may not have posted this very nice picture for us to enjoy with your short story. Thanks for posting.

[crossthedog]

PC101

If you would have done the research first and found your answers then you may not have posted this very nice picture for us to enjoy with your short story. Thanks for posting.

Thanks for saying.

I'm sort of fascinated by this behemoth. If I could convince my wife to start parking her car outside, I could add a logging operation in the other half of the garage and then model the tower skidder. I actually found that the Lidgerwood has been produced in HO scale, but...

https://www.brasstrains.com/BrassGuide/Pdg/Detail/26746/HO-Rolling-Stock-MOW-Precision-Scale-Co-PSC-17626-1-Lidgerwood-Log-Skidder-Misc-Roads-Lidgerwood-Log-Skidder

...I'll wait for an Athearn or Bachmann version.

[crossthedog]

 

I followed the trail to the Roots of Motive Power museum in Willits, California. Sadly, it doesn't look like they'll be firing it up any time soon:

Seeing such a marvel of engineering lying in pieces, basically serving as blackberry supports while it composts itself, fills me with melancholy. But it also makes me really appreciate the photo of my dad standing beside it. (He'd have been beside himself, too.) This was probably around 1998. I'll bet he told me all about this thing the next time I was over for dinner. But I wouldn't remember. I was never listening.

 

 

 

[PC101]

crossthedog

 

PC101

If you would have done the research first and found your answers then you may not have posted this very nice picture for us to enjoy with your short story. Thanks for posting.

 

 

Thanks for saying.

 

I'm sort of fascinated by this behemoth. If I could convince my wife to start parking her car outside, I could add a logging operation in the other half of the garage and then model the tower skidder. I actually found that the Lidgerwood has been produced in HO scale, but...

https://www.brasstrains.com/BrassGuide/Pdg/Detail/26746/HO-Rolling-Stock-MOW-Precision-Scale-Co-PSC-17626-1-Lidgerwood-Log-Skidder-Misc-Roads-Lidgerwood-Log-Skidder

...I'll wait for an Athearn or Bachmann version.

 

crossthedog, when I saw your first picture I thought, Woohoo, look at that rigging. The real deal must have been a Riggers nighmare. Thanks for the link to the ROOTS-OF-MOTIVE-POWER-HIGHLINE.

It was a tough life being a Woodhick.

PC101

[gmpullman]

crossthedog

Seeing such a marvel of engineering lying in pieces, basically serving as blackberry supports while it composts itself, fills me with melancholy.

Sadly the same fate befell the once-mighty Hulett ore unloaders on Whiskey Island in Cleveland.

Huletts-Today by Edmund, on Flickr

These machines were the backbone of the Great Lakes iron ore traffic and brought about the ability to move massive amounts of iron ore from the Mesabi range to the high-producing furnaces of Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

Hulett_Delano_43 by Edmund, on Flickr

Hulett_Bucket-chain-repair by Edmund, on Flickr

When I heard of the plans for "preservation" when all the wheeling and dealing was going on to have them removed, I thought to myself, those monsters will never see the light of day again.

Historical Landmarks?

https://www.asme.org/about-asme/engineering-history/landmarks/199-hulett-ore-unloaders

Regards, Ed

 

[crossthedog]

@PC, I had never heard the phrase wood hick before. The photos I saw of the skidder in operation indeed showed a clipper ship's worth of rigging up on that tower.

gmpullman

When I eeard of the plans for "preservation" when all the wheeling and dealing was going on to have them removed I thought to myself, those monsters will never see the light of day again.

Ed, it's a terrible thing to be able to be right about something like that. What a sorry end to such cool machines. In days of yore we might have taken some consolation in the fact that roving packs of bored kids would find and claim these ivy-covered leviathans for their clubhouses and secret hideouts, and then grow up to discover what they had once been. But children do not go outside anymore, as far as I can tell, and even if they took any interest in something that could not be manipulated or blown to bits on a screen, they would never be allowed to clamber over some rusted hulk for fear that they would scrape a knee. Your preserved Huletts and my Lidgerwood will someday surely pass quietly to a scrapper without a squeak from anyone.

 

[doctorwayne]

crossthedog

"Is this a logging boom?".

Technically, no...a log boom is a "raft" of logs encapsulated by logs connected together by chains or cables, meant for floating, en masse, to a sawmill....

 

That is, however, a boom on that piece of machinery, which acts as a loading device.

Wayne

 

[selector]

The first photo above shows a steam donkey with a crane.  It's a loader.  However, as we can clearly see, this loader has a boom.  It isn't of the skidder/loader kind with a head spar and gin poles.  Head spars are tall straight firs, 130 feet or more, left in the ground and guyed with cables.  A gin is jabbed into place where it is needed and had blocks and rope/cable for skidding and helping to horse logs onto flat cars.

A log boom is a raft of floating logs, often with shepherd logs chained together around their perimeter to keep strays from drifting off when they are being moved down stream or across a lake.  Doc Wayne correctly delineates that difference.

If the OP is interested, there's an excellent book by Richard Mackie titled "Mountain Timber"; Sononis Press, Winlaw, British Columbia (2009) that describes mountain logging very well.  It is about the area where I live and the Comox Logging & Railway Co.  

[Ablebakercharlie]

crossthedog

I'll bet he told me all about this thing the next time I was over for dinner. But I wouldn't remember. I was never listening.

I've been meaning to respond to this - I hope you don't beat yourself up too much about this.  When we were young we think our parents will live forever and don't realize how precious the time we have together is.  I lost my father when I was 30 and I think about what an idiot I was when I was young and like you, wasn't listening when I should have. 

Anyway, I don't want to get too maudlin but I felt your statement couldn't be ignored and deserved a respectful response.

- charles

[crossthedog]

Ablebakercharlie

crossthedog

I'll bet he told me all about this thing the next time I was over for dinner. But I wouldn't remember. I was never listening.

I've been meaning to respond to this - I hope you don't beat yourself up too much about this.  When we were young we think our parents will live forever and don't realize how precious the time we have together is.  I lost my father when I was 30 and I think about what an idiot I was when I was young and like you, wasn't listening when I should have. 

Anyway, I don't want to get too maudlin but I felt your statement couldn't be ignored and deserved a respectful response.

- charles

Hi Charles. Thank you. And I get that. Regret isn't very productive. Really, I'm just a melancholy person and I'm also pretty gabby (weird combo at parties, believe me), so I say stuff like that mainly to express the feeling that I really wish my dad was still around. He'd be over the moon that I've taken on so many challenges in bringing about a new layout after 40 years, and in fact I talk to him in the train room all the time, about whether he thinks he may have left me a small piece of piano wire I could use right about now, or how handy the 1/2" drill bit is that I found among his stuff (as I put it back in its sleeve with the other bits in the set I always say "Thanks Willard!"). And I honored him by naming that safety pin switch mechanism that I think he invented after him (the Willard Pin Throw and -- my contribution -- the Modified Willard Pin Throw or "hot Willy"). In all these ways I keep him with me every time I work on the layout.

And he was very smart about electronics, so it's a bummer every time I wish I could ask him how he'd wire something. But it's okay: that's why I have YOU clowns.

-Matt