The logging industry was brought to its limit in 1881 due to an explosion in demand for lumber. Forests in Maine were logged out and abandoned. As the wood in the Great Lakes region was depleted, and when the logging companies moved west, the guys in the forest were heavier and heavier than the bigger, bigger and bigger; industry struggled to keep up.
As is often the case in history, around the time when the car is very necessary, someone enters it. When the logging industry, unfortunately, tried to dramatically increase production, an invention emerged that revolutionized the industry. This invention is the Donkey Steam Engine, a steam mechanical winch developed by John Dolber in 1881. This year was announced as the beginning of technological change in the industry. This car was both the best friend of the lumberjacks, and his mortal enemy, if he was not constantly on his guard. As one lumberjack said, "There is a lot of hard work there, but if you don’t look, it will kill you."
John was a founding member of the Dolbeer and Carson Lumber Company in Eureka, California. Eureka is a city in Humboldt County, about 100 miles from the border with California and Oregon, and represents a vast logging and logging area.
Dolbyer received a patent number 256553 for the steam engine "Donkey" on April 18, 1882. For comparison, 7.5 million patents are currently issued in the United States. As a point of interest, the current patent numbering system began with patent No. 1, issued July 13, 1836. Information about this patent is not available, but until this date about 10,000 patents were issued.
Steam donkeys actually got their name from their origin on sailing ships, where the donkey engine was usually a small secondary engine used for loading and unloading cargo, raising large sails with small crews or on power pumps. Dolber was a naval engineer before proceeding to the registration, which unnecessarily led to his choice of a name for his invention. It is also said that the lumberjacks will sing this modest name, because the original model looked too dismissive to be evaluated in horsepower. The donkey's power does not have a powerful engine image, but, as you will see, a steam donkey engine can potentially snatch a giant log from the forest.
This remarkable engine was essentially a collection of mechanical components, starting with a wood-fired steam boiler. The boiler provided steam in the range from 100 to 200 pounds per square inch to a single-cylinder engine that transmitted power through the connection of the rod to the crankshaft, on which the flywheel was mounted with some kind of braking mechanism. The lever clutch configuration controlled the set of gearboxes and drive wheels that controlled the winch. The winch can be either a large pulley with a horizontal shaft or a drum, or a rod mounted on a vertical shaft.
“Oslo's Engines” have come to an endless variety of configurations of steam, gas, diesel, or power plants and drums for attaching the cable. They had one thing in common; they were all used to haul logs from the forest, load them on boarding, move equipment, fit trees and lower or raise wagons up and down the slopes. But the vast majority of them were steam, and most of them were built in Seattle, Tacoma and Portland. It's hard to imagine, but a hundred and fifty years ago, Seattle was basically a logging city, like Vancouver, British Columbia.
In the simplest setting, the “linear horse” pulled the cable into a log in the forest. The cable will be attached, and, at a signal from the whistle on the engine, the operator "Donkey" will open the steam valve on the boiler and turn on the clutch, allowing the transmission mechanism to rotate the drum. When the cable was wound around the drum, the magazine was dragged over the donkey. Then the log was sent either to the mill or to the “landing”, where it will be handed over for subsequent transportation by rail, road or river; either loaded onto boats or floated down the river directly into the water. The layout of the logging operation was a small task, as the terrain and characteristics of the rivers had to be carefully considered and were important for the successful movement of these giant logs.
Operation Donkey had its own jargon. There are hundreds of terms that are unique to this activity and too numerous to mention here. Significant names are described here.
Operating an early donkey required the service of at least three people, a boy and a horse. One person, Choker-Setter, tied a line to a magazine; engineer or donkey-puncher, leaned over a steam engine; and Spool Tender led a buzz line over the coil with a short stick. An occasional neophyte was trying to use a leg, not a stick. When he returns from the hospital, he will use his new wooden leg instead. The boy, dubbed the “Punk Whistle”, completed the communication wire from the “Choker Setter” from logs back to the steam whistle on the engine. It was said that the punk whistle could be told with its style of whistles.
When Choker Setter provided the line from the coil, the Whistle Punk pulled his wire whistle as a signal to the engineer that the log was ready to be dragged. As soon as one magazine was turned on or “bent”, it was separated from the line. The horse then pulled the line from the Donkey engine back to the waiting Choker Setter and the next magazine. Later a “boot” drum was added, where a smaller cable could be laid around the “tuning” and connected to the end of a heavier “main line” to replace the linear horse.
The more typical team "Donkey" consists of nine or ten people: "Water tender" (the water tank had to be replenished, because steam was supplied and exhausted from the engine), "Donkey Puncher", one or two tenders for a coil, two Forest Fuller (they were never called the “Winners”), the Horseman-mounted infantryman and, of course, the whistle of Punk. In a large wooded area, there may be more than one Oslo engine and crew, so you can imagine violent activities to get these logs per mill. One engine can pull the logs to the next engine, depending on the terrain and so on. These were not the tasks of the fault of the heart. No wimps are allowed.
You can ask how these large heavy devices will move through the woods in very rough and uneven terrain? They were actually self-propelled. Since the engine and associated equipment were installed on heavy runners, and because it was used for pulling, the free end of the cable was tied to a distant tree, the other end was wrapped around the winch on the engine, gears were used and the entire assembly slid into place over the hill and valley .
When in the final position, the donkey was tied to nearby trees in order to secure the machine and not allow it to ride at magazines. It will be just the opposite of the desired effect. In the end, the donkey was mounted on a sled, so that it slid easily through the forest. As Sir Isaac Newton once said, perhaps more than once: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction!” This reaction should have been limited, in this case by cables.
Once the area was incapacitated, the Donkey had to be transferred to the next grove of trees to be cut. The holding cables would be removed, the pulling cable would be attached to a distant tree, stump, or other strong anchor, and the machine would pull itself overland to the next place. It looked like a winch at the front end of a jeep pulled out of a stream or canyon or mountain.
Twenty-six different types of steam donkeys were built in the northwest Pacific only by one company. In 1913, one company built 51 donkeys in a 49-day period, all of which were sold before they left the factory to fill the rush.
Donkey engines are throwing more and more. There were two drum and three drum donkeys, capable of pulling logs out of the forest through high wires, donkeys who loaded the logs on the cars and planted donkeys, which rolled the logs onto river or lake landings. It was a big business in those days in support of the great logging industry. In the later years of the ass, some of them were of intense size. For example, one was so large that it had to be installed on two cars. I doubted that he was dragged in the forest.
AT Registrars , Chapter 3, The Taming of the Virginia Forest, author of the turn of the century, Ralph D. Payne, occurred during a logging operation in the Western Cascades and was filled with both admiration and terrorism in what he saw. He described the scene: “Thick greenhouse roads ran to nearby trees, moored to a donkey, as to a naughty beast, and disappeared. The area was swamped by winds, high orths, sawn tops and branches, upturned roots, 15 feet in the air.
Payne noticed a long signal wire, which was diverted from the engine whistling in the woods. When an invisible person jerked this wire, the Burro shouted a series of intelligent explosions, which could only be some kind of code. The engine began to tremble, the drums began to spin, and the cable was taut. The donkey jumped from mooring; his massive body began to rise and sit down, as if forcing his nose to be buried in the ground.
Then it made a noise in the forest, as if the trees were pulled up by roots. A moment later, a log sprang out of the undergrowth, flying 1,000 feet. He exploded, as if he had wings, broke and cut through his own path ... so quickly that when it came to the stump, he broke over him, as if he had overcome an obstacle. Then he got confused with another giant magazine. These two, as one, did not even hesitate, and both approached the engine.
He said it was a terrific sight to see a six-foot-long and 40-foot long log tied to you, as if the devil was in it, smashing trees, as if they were sprigs, jumping over obstacles, choosing their way.
When the giant log was within 20 feet of the loading platform where he was standing, Pannie panicked and ran, but then he said: “The huge rocket stopped in its flight, and the Osley workshop had a breathing spell.”
Old timers love these old engines and enjoy the restoration and demonstration of their capabilities in museums and parks. Just mentioning the Donkey Steam Generator will cause the old logger or the young history buff to look into the forest and recall, perhaps with tears in his eyes, the look and sound of one of these great steam engines pulling giant logs from the forest to turn into lumber for the construction of the West. San Francisco had to be rebuilt after the land of 1906, which led to a huge increase in demand for lumber.
The sounds that they uttered when they were doing their duty — giddy, clang, bang, whirr, hissing, tweeting — were rumors of mechanical engineers and mechanics. There is nothing like a click, a click, a click of a big gear gear, driving a giant bull gear round and round when the pulling cable is pulled in a log.
As a mechanical engineer, I was delighted with the observation of these great old machines, like a musician standing in front of a symphony orchestra and listening to a great composition.
The donkey was unique in many ways, even in terms of its own sounds. How many knows what a steam ass is? Even among lovers of steam locomotives, few people are familiar with the powerful sound of hot, dry steam, which feeds 12 x 14 meters, pulling at high speed. It is like nothing else. Strength, speed, vibration and smell were all part of it. Memories of those days are a time of glamor, achievement, humor and hard work, despite the fact that people face danger, pain, and sometimes death.
Now you can ask: “How could a guy all suffocate from old and rusty old gadgets?” Well, to an old woodcutter, mechanic, or mountain man, these are several tons of wonderful things that bring about memories of a bygone era, the heyday of registration in the west. I would describe them as “Steam Junkies” or “Gear Heads”. This is definitely a “guy.” As a matter of fact, donkeys are a link to the “glory days of harvesting.” Those who worked on the “big forests” around the steamboats, talking about time, are now gone forever, with respectful nostalgia. There is a definite romance if you can call it something related to donkey steam engines.
In his book, In search of steam asses , Merv Johnson recalls his father, Lee Johnson, “warming a toast to expanding the firebox” in the “Chevy pickup” between the shoulders of two lumberjacks, who remembered the old days. Both of them spent most of their living creatures and around donkeys. Their vivid descriptions of how the villi sounded with 225 pounds of steam in hard tension, how the chimney door filled up after turning the logs, burst into my eyes that day. ”
Just standing next to the wonderfully restored steam engine "Donkey", which listens to the whistle signal, steam flying into and out of the piston, connecting rod moving up and down, rotating the flywheel, engaging large old gears and rotating pulleys is an emotional experience - especially those who with love restored the beast.
There is a famous saying about boys and their toys; well it's about guys and their asses.
Unfortunately, of the thousands that were built in the era of steam, only a few remained, and few are close to their working condition. How did these cars disappear so fast? Why were the tracks almost completely erased? These ships were central to the nature of the mechanized logging of the time. Each car had its own personality, its own characteristics, unlike today. Today, the machine operator rises into a closed cabin, presses the electric starter button and effortlessly controls the device with a joystick, in contrast to what was found in the video game.
Despite the fact that there are several donkeys in museums, very few are currently in working condition. The exception is the Petry Donkey steam engine at the Central Museum of the Sierra Historical Society in Lake Shaver, California. It was discovered in 1993 southeast of Lake Razor on the side of the mountain by Patrick Emmert, the nephew of the owner of the Pine Logging Company in the Dinky Creek. Pine forest cutting was carried out from 1937 to 1979 and was the last sawmill operating in the Sierra Sierra Forest.
Patrick studied the history of sawmills in the area and continued rumors that he had been there in the old town of Petry Sawmill, where he had been resting since his refusal in 1912. It was just a rusty heap of metal when Patrick found it - the fire mill in 1947 incinated all the wooden parts of the supporting structure, and many of the smaller mechanical components were gone. Mill fires were quite common in those days, and many mills had to be rebuilt several times. But Patrick acknowledged that it was still a treasure.
Well, he found it - now what? How do you remove a rusty old pile of steel (treasure) covered with a perennial forest that weighs several tons from its shelter in the depths of the forest? As lucky, the helicopter company worked on the sale of spare timber in the area and agreed to take the Donkey on a flat piece of land that belonged to Patrick. It took only 5 minutes. Imagine how much time was originally taken to drag this engine to the place of work of the forest. From there, he was pulled by a flatbed truck from the mountain to a store in Tallhouse, California, for intensive restoration. Defective parts had to be replaced, which were purchased from many sources in old California logging areas and from current steam equipment catalogs. There are numerous steam engine enthusiasts.
The restoration of this engine took a lot of TLC and five years of hard work, but when it was completed in 1998, the gang held a “couple” party to celebrate this event. The engine was mounted on a low platform trailer and transported to various logging stones. When the Museum of the History of the Central Sierra Historical Society on Lake Razor was completed in 2007, this work of love was donated to the museum, where it is now on permanent and permanent display - with its own protective roof. The finished product weighs about 3 tons, including heavy timber.
Patrick also discovered the Donkey-Motor boiler at a Sierra sawmill in 1994 in the front yard of a house in Clovis, California. The missing parts were familiar from various sources throughout the West, and it was also restored at the same store in Tallhaus. Теперь он установлен на трейлере, который нужно подталкивать к функциям, которые хотят демонстрацию Donkey. Эти двигатели были с любовью и кропотливо восстановлены в почти идеальном рабочем состоянии командой преданных донских доцентов.
Шесть раз в год, День памяти, День труда и другие торжества, они (ослы и доценты) проходят через их лица в музее для наслаждения как молодых, так и старых, чтобы продемонстрировать технику вытаскивания из леса. И вы можете взорвать паровые свистки в своем сердце. Если вы настроены на музыку, вы даже можете сыграть мелодию на свистах. Люди приходят из разных стран, чтобы участвовать в этих ностальгических событиях.
Итак, если вы склонны принимать участие в веселых празднествах «Steam Up» с ослами-ослами, вставайте.
