On Saturday, March 15th, the Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad relocated a Willamette car-mounted steam "unit" from its display site at the Lion's Club Campground in Mineral, WA, down the road about a mile and a half to our new museum that incorporates the MRSR restoration/machine shop, locomotive storage/display buildings, logging camp bunk houses and other artifacts. The unit was built for the West Fork Logging Company by Willamette Iron & Steel Works of Portland, OR in 1923. West Fork logged thousands of acres to the south of Mineral, later logged by the St. Regis Paper Company. After the logging railroad was torn up (around 1956), the unit was placed alongside Mineral Lake and used to load logs from the lake to Milwaukee Road log cars for transport to the Tacoma tideflats. In or about 1969 (depending on which local you speak to), the unit was moved from the lake side to the campground for display.

As built, the machine combined a WISCO 13"x14" direct geared, two-speed yarder engine with double-extended firebox boiler, and a WISCO 10"x11" loader engine on a steel "skidder car". The unit was apparently wood fired when built, and later converted to oil (based on the construction and mounting technique of the fuel oil tank). During its use by West Fork, the WISCO loader was replaced with the existing three-drum Washington Iron Works 11"x12" duplex loader. The unit was provided to West Fork on Pacific Car & Foundry trucks which were discarded when the unit was placed by the lake in the late 1950's.

As an interesting aside, in 2009, several years prior to the formation of the museum project, MRSR was donated a pair of PC&F skidder trucks (ex-Simpson Timber Co.) that were part of a private collection. The trucks were taken out of storage and prepared for the service for which they were built.

Short-term plans for the West Fork steam unit include some repairs to replace missing pieces, a thorough cleaning, new paint and "West Fork Logging Co." lettering, and reconstruction of the post-and-beam "house". The unit will be placed on display directly outside the MRSR restoration/machine shop, alongside our ex-Rayonier (nee-Polson Logging) camp buildings.

Brian Wise
Director - Operations & Restorations
Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad

Photo 1: West Fork Unit #2 as it appeared at the Lion's Club Campground prior to moving.

Photo 2: The Washington duplex loader was removed from the unit to lower the over-all weight of the machine.

Photo 3: The remainder of the unit is placed on a special duty trailer for movement down the road.

Photo 4: After leaving the campground, the unit made a round-trip tour of downtown Mineral to the delight of the locals, in order to get it headed in the right direction.

Photo 5: The journey is almost over as the unit turns off of Mineral Creek Road and through the front gate of the West Fork Timber Co. property to access the MRSR museum site. West Fork Timber Co. was incorporated by L.T. Murray as a holding company and continues today to manage the timber lands owned by West Fork (Murray Pacific).

Photo 6: Unit #2 is once again sitting on wheels as Willamette intended as the Washington loader engine is set into place.

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Brian Wise

Brian, thanks for the pictures. What does the steam "unit" weigh? I've never seen anything like it!

Alan

Any chance of posing the Willamette locomotive next to it during Steam fest?

I'm looking at that thing, and all I can say is "WOW!" I count THREE separate engines on that machine. I can't begin to imagine what it must have looked and sounded like with all three in operation at one time.

A puny glimpse at what it may have looked like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKqGkmt3KrQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec2Z64_b0zA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Twv6Pn1T4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt2hjk-oHH4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HlIPC2gEeo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMdk8LSrYP0


Congratulations on the rescue, including the acquisition of appropriate trucks!

Great photos, Mt. Rainier SRR keeps getting better and better, gotta make the trip west for sure! Any plans to make the machine operational in the future?

Very cool machine and (from the videos) very interesting process.

So was the intent with these machines be to move them around from site to site?

Would the loggers clear one section and set up the machine to clear the logs, thne off to the next section, etc.?

Indeed, that's how it was, and not just for the skidder, but for the whole logging railroad itself. It was not uncommon for some log spurs to have an active life of as little as six months or so.

Such a railroad, largely consisting of rough, cheap, temporary track, was the reason for the development of specialized logging locomotives, particularly the geared engines.

These photos, from a site on the Buffalo Creek & Gauley, illustrating the logging operations of Elk River Coal & Lumber (actually BC&G's "parent" company), show the conditions on woods track in West Virginia; what would have been seen in the west would be very similar, except for different (and bigger) trees.

http://www.buffalocreekandgauley.com/OP ... CLOps.html

http://www.buffalocreekandgauley.com/LO ... Locos.html

Home page for further study (turn your speakers on):

http://www.buffalocreekandgauley.com/index.html

For anyone interested in Pacific Northwest Logging in the steam days, I would highly recommend picking up a copy of this DVD. It's chock full of old time logging footage, from moving the crews from camp to the woods, to felling and bucking the trees, to rigging up and then loading with a spar tree, to moving the steam donkey to the next site, to dumping the logs in the millpond (and later dredging oout the millpond with a steam powered rail clamshell crane) it's all here: http://www.discovernw.org/store_steam-w ... 16908.html

Also, for anyone interested in this field, Darius Kinsey and Clark Kinsey should be household names. The University of Washington has digitized many of the Kinsey photos and posted them online.


Darius Kinsey was the earlier of the two, and took more "artisitc" photos which are quite beautiful in and of themselves:
http://content.lib.washington.edu/kinseyweb/

Clark Kinsey was Darius' son, and he took many of the same photos over and over again (i.e. logging crew posed on the steam donkey). However, this does the viewer an idea of how no two steam donkeys looked the same after working in the woods for awhile:
http://content.lib.washington.edu/clarkkinseyweb/

I can't wait to make it to MRSR to see the new museum they're working on. This "unit" will be a great thing to see there.

So glad to see this getting the attention it needs!
I find it ironic that this went out on a flatbed as it's so close to the tracks for the reverse loop for MRSR. It couldn't go out that way but it must have been so irritating for it to be that close to the tracks and couldn't get out like that.

Alan,
As it sat in the campground, without the "house" or trucks, it weighed in at 140,000 lbs.

Brian

I'm certain that can be arranged!

Brian

The short-term plans are to cosmetically restore the unit to its ca. 1940 appearance, but during that process we will probably perform an in-depth inspection of the boiler and machinery to ascertain the possibility of some type of limited operation in the future. Willamette boilers are well built and a number of those that have sat out in the woods for decades have been returned to service, so it is not out of the realm of possibility that this one could steam some day. The Willamette yarder engine is basically complete, lacking only one valve chest cover (but the Willamette balanced ball valves are inside admission and the cover isn't even necessary for operation), so odds are good that it could be made to run. The Washington loader engine is missing a few pieces that would be easy to replicate. The loader is a duplex, so everything you would have to do to make the Willamette yarder engine run, you'd have to do four times on the Washington. Lots of work, but again, not impossible. Certainly is fun to think about!

Brian

That is correct. Units were designed to be moved from one site to another and used to both yard the logs to the rail head and load them onto log cars. The unit would be set at the end of a spur alongside the logging railroad's line, with a spar tree just in front of the machine (the unit would be braced to the tree and held firm with cables). After jacking the unit up off its trucks and set onto cribbing for stability, the rear set of drums would be rigged to haul the logs from the surrounding hills to the railhead. The front set of drums was then rigged via the spar tree for loading the logs onto the log cars (by means of a hay rack, heel boom, or some other style of rigging). When the loggers were done loading logs at that "landing," the unit would be moved to the next site and the process repeated.

There were variations on the "unit" machine, some being constructed on log skids like other donkeys, instead of on steel "skidder cars." Those on skids had to be loaded onto heavy-duty flat cars for transport. There were also versions of the unit that had their own steel tower so they did not need a spar tree. Larger versions of the units had three engines: a yarder engine (at the rear by the boiler), a rigging engine (in the center) and a loader engine (at front).

Brian