A Poleish Train

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I saw this on a RYPN thread about "Pole Lines" and had to share it with my fellow  s.

My only thought was.



For more info: http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38501

[Bob Bufkin]

They could spruce that up with some decent mag wheels.

[C855B]

Hmm. Can't get much speed with that setup. You'd only be lumbering along at best.

[wazzou]

It looks like a mid train helper.  I bet they had to make liberal use of the sanders.

[Dave V]

Log this one as another splintered thread...

[ednadolski]

wow, double-sided pizza-cutters, AND a Weaver sprocket drive!   

Ed

[victor miranda]

gold comes in many forms.  I thought this would be about the WWII treasure train ...
 
bach to the punishment...

is that loco made by bough-ser?

[peteski]

Those Poles are very enterprising!  And everybody thought they were dumb!  Using wooden logs for rails and concave-thread double-flanged wheels. Brilliant!

[nkalanaga]

A very common logging design, and probably buildable if one uses brass rods for the logs.  Might be an interesting experiment.

[lock4244]

OMG, the puns are killing me!

[trainforfun]

You have to find the right ( or left ) trees for the curves !

[nkalanaga]

Most of the lines avoided curves as much as possible, or made them from short segments of logs.  These were temporary lines, build in, cut the trees, haul them out, remove the line.  Even with steel rails that was the plan for most logging "woods" lines, as the track was useless once the trees were cut.  Loggers got very good at laying and lifting track quickly, and invented some ingenious, and strange looking, contraptions to make it easier.

These pole roads seem to have been most common in the east, and often went with semi-portable mills.  Rather than haul the logs to a mainline, then to the mill, just move the mill to the nearest flat spot to the logging area.  So poleslines tended to be fairly short.

If you want to see a REALLY strange "locomotive", try the Blackman "transverse articulated" from Skagit County, Washington.  Google has several links to pages on it, including this one:
http://www.gearedsteam.com/other/blackman.htm


For a short description, it was an 0-4-0, with a 4-wheel tender.  Basically it was two steam powered bicycles, with a boiler between them, and vertical cylinders driving both wheels on a side throug rods and gears.  The two sides were independent, and connect by pivoting tiebars.  On wide gauge track, the tiebars were straight across, like an axle, and the wheels were opposite each other.  When the gauge narrowed, the pivots allowed one side to move ahead of the other, and the tiebars were angle, narrowing the space between the wheels.  The tender truck worked the same way.  Probably the only successful locomotive ever built for variable-gauge track.  There were some that could have the gauge changed, by moving the wheels on the axles, but not while running...

They also built matching log cars.