The Olympic Peninsula Lumber Company near Montesano
Wash has a daily output of 150,000 board feet (one board foot is
equivalent to a piece of wood 1 x 12 x 12 inches). Logging is on both
company, private and Forest Service lands, 60% on private holdings and 40%
on government lands. The company employed 220 men and uses 4 high line
logging setups, ten steam donkeys a gas donkey and was operates 20 miles
of standard gauge railway. Railroad is handled by two rod locomotives
using 56 log cars, they also have a locomotive crane, 2 flat cars, 4 tank
cars and two ballast cars.
Two camps are maintained. Camp No. 1 is the year
round show, producing about 100,000 feet daily with two sides, and is
fully equipped with offices commissary, cookhouse, shops etc. Camp No. 5 is
the summer show, operating from June thru Christmas, producing an average
of 150,000 feet per day with three sides. Both camps employ trucks to
bring the logs to the rail head. Each side uses two D8's, one D7
skidding. Two D8's with four Kenworth gravel trucks are used for road
construction. A D7 is on standby. Seven logging trucks handle the each
camp's logging output, including Whites and A cars equipped with Page and
Page and Fruehauf Trailers.
Segregation of logs into peeler, corelogs and sawlogs,
is done at the rail landing and loaded according to destination. Fir logs
14 inches to 24 inches at the tops, cedar 54 inches at the butt and small
hemlock are moved to the sawmill and veneer plants. Fir, cedar and pine
peelers are decked to go to plywood and veneer plants in Aberdeen, Hoquiam
and Tacoma. After the logs are sorted at the landings, trucks are
carefully loaded with the required log footage and in proper length to
make a rail car load. . Each truck carries a full rail car load,
pre-loaded at the landing and ready to transfer to the rail equipment.
A McGiffert steam rail loader with a spreader bar is
used at the Camp 1 rail transfer and an overhead crane unloader is used at
Camp 5. Two, long cylindrical bars, each weighted at one end are placed
beneath the truck load. As the lifting weight on the bars is released, the
heavy end tips up the bar to release the hook on the opposite end and the
bar slides free from beneath the load. The transfer is completed in a
minutes time.
With the inroads of trucks into the logging industry
the geared locomotives were quickly scrapped. Rayonier and Macmillan
Blodels operation on Vancouver island lasted until 1969 with steam. WWSL
imitates their steam operation with a 1055 and 1044 tank locomotives
0-8-0t downsized to 0-6-0T and 0-4-0T
Schafer brothers – claimed world record 67 cars in
8 hours
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