Pulpwood Operations questions

[WCfan]

Pulp wood was one of the biggest customers on the WC.

It would be possible that trucks hauled to a rail transfer. But usually pulp gets sent right to a paper mill close by. A small spur can be placed any where. In Northern WI, WC had numerous spurs every where. The pulp was usually stacked by a small crane (I'm not sure what they are called but there like the ones on top of pulp wood log trucks). Bulk head flat cars, gondolas, or Bulk head gondolas are most likely what will be used. If you don't want to get new chip cars, you can take one of your old boxcars and pry the door off. WC did this for the mill in Ashland WI and where used into the CN era. To make loads you can make them out of sticks found in your back yard.

Here are some photos of another guy who made his pulp wood loads out of sticks.

http://photosfromtheworkbench.fotopic.net/c1467885.html

I did make a Pulp wood load for gondola, but I can't seem to find it now. If you interested in the boxcar Idea, here is one I made.

[Bob Hayes]

Chuck,

Plywood is not made from chips.  Logs are cut into lengths of about 8 ft. and sent to a mill.  There they are peeled into thin veneers about 4x8. Glue is applied to the veneers and they are pressed together to form a sheet.  After the glue has cured, the sheets are trimmed to the finished size.  Chips are used to make OSB, and paper.  

You should watch "How It's Made".  They did an article on making plywood and OSB. 

Bob Hayes

 

[Bob Hayes]

Wolf,

Nice picture, but how do you get the wood from the storage rack next to the pickup onto the flatcar?

Bob Hayes

 

[mopac57]

Dehusman is correct.

I remember when I was a kid in East Texas (this would be the early/mid 1980s), there were still plenty of pulpwood loading "team tracks" in the smaller towns. The MoPac would drop off empty bulkhead/pulpwood flats. Trucks would haul in the pulpwood from distant logging areas and it would be loaded onto the railcars with truck/tractor things much like dehusman described. I'm working on incorporating something like that into my layout. It's fairly simple and straightforward--easy thing to model: a spur (buried in the dirt and weeds), some stacked wood, and maybe a small office building. 

There's a Yahoo group dedicated to forestry modeling--you might join them and see what info others have found. I think it's called "southeast forestry modeling" or something. A simple search should turn it up.

You might also do a Google photo search for "pulpwood loading." When I was researching how to model it, I did a few photo searches and got some ideas--sometimes not from my era (1982), but the basic idea is the same, whether it's 1962 or 1982.

You might also try railcarphotos.com and search for "pulpwood flats." That will turn up pulpwood cars sitting at sidings waiting to be loaded. Though the photos are focused on the flats themselves, you can sometimes glean some info from the surrounding scene. 

Hope this helps.

[dehusman]

I am familiar with pulpwood ops in E Texas.  The trucks would bring in cut wood to a loading track and then it would be loaded onto a car.  The newer operations used a tractor like a rubber tired front end loader with a huge "claw" that grabs the pulpwood.  The older operations used a truck with a forklift like tower on the back with chains that went around a bundle of pulpwood and lifted it up to put it on the railcar. 

By the late 1980's early 1990's most of the pupwood operations had been replaced by chippers.  The pulpwood was brought to a chipper that shredded the wood into chips and loaded it into hopper cars.  The chips were then taken to the paper mill.  Way easier to handle than pulpwood. Pulpwood was always shifting and falling off of cars.

Dave H.

[wjstix]

Whether it goes by truck or rail would depend on the period and how far it had to go. In Minnesota, the pulpwood was going to plants fairly far away, so before good state and interstate highways railroads in northeast MN hauled a lot of pulpwood. In the 1960's that was still a big commodity for DMIR and the D&NE.

Size depends on how it was loaded. If it was mechanically loaded, you could use 8' long logs. Hand loading limited the size to 4' logs.

In remote areas, it wouldn't be unusual for a small town to have sort of a team track for pulpwood, local people would cut logs on their property and bring them 'to town' to sell and load on the railcars. So it wasn't always a big commercial operation, it sometimes was a very "modelable" size.

[wedudler]

That's my pulpwood loading track.

Wolfgang 

[sunsetbeachry]

HI.

............The last opperation that I know of was Rayonior: Doug fir,and most other varies of timber were cut loaded on over wide trucks both single and double [tractor and trailer, or tractor and trailer and trailer ] taken to a loading area trans loaded to rail and delivered to mill,where logs were cut, dried and tren shipped out as either dried or wet lumber. The scraps were chopped up and sent by chipper loads to the plywood mill and made into what else??? plywood.......This is still going on..

    This was done up to about 1965 by steam and is now done by **YUCK** . This is all happining just north of here in Washington.....

Wide trucks are overly wide ;not run on highways but very good on logging roads.

                               CHUCK
 

[colvinbackshop]

Well...I can't address what goes on in CA, but can say what I see happening here in Northern MN.

We've got paper mills and OSB plants all around us and for the most part the wood is brought in by semi-truck. But I have seen pulp being loaded in rail cars (gondolas) to the N.E. of me and I see gondolas loaded with wood going through on the main here in GR too. Both on BNSF and SOO (mostly SOO) trains.

[ratled]

A couple of pulpwood op's questions for you guys if you don't mind.  I just kinda got into these as rail customers but I don't know anything about their operations. I did a search on here, the Atlas forum and the www.  I was able to find out what everyone did to make loads, the cars they use and that the end receiver used a lot of car loads but I'm looking for info on the sending end.  I'm toying with the idea of replacing a customer on the layout that would generate better revenue on my SP HO scale layout in Oct 1983 in Nor Cal. Am I out of era on this thought?

What I'm looking for is references to research this end of the operations.  Also, would it be a probable scenario that trucks would haul it out of the mountains to a central location and the transfer to rail or since it was already on the trucks just keep driving them to the end customer?  How did they get the loads on the cars?  Machine?  Hand stack?  I'm thinking if I just modeled the loading end at the rails I could get a good customer for little space and a decent increase in cars per day.  This would be in addition to my 2 wood chip customers I already have.  Would there be these 2 similar type operations in the same area and ok to mix?

Also, if you have any pictures or suggestions they would always be appreciated!!!

Thanks for you wisdom and info

ratled