A National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark Lombard
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A National Historic Lombard Steam The American Society of Mechanical Engineering Log Hauler Mechanical Engineers Landmark August 14, 1982 Patten, Maine were availble and moreover could get abandoned. Some attempts were through a winter on wild hay cut on made to drive poplar pulpwood but it the meadows in the woods while became waterlogged so quickly that horses required good hay and grain. it usually sank in the pond in which it The oxen in many cases hauled was landed. pine long distances and the logs were As a result of these limitations, driven out of streams so small that it there were at the turn of the century now seems hardly possible that they uncounted thousands of acres of fine ever floated a pine log. When it was maple, white and yellow birch, beech, considered that the available pine and ash, which, with the equipment was exhausted there still remained available, could not be gotten to any many small areas with a good stand market. Lumbering in Maine, which began of “pumpkin” pine. Thus the time was ripe for the de- along the coast with cutting pine for One town in northern Maine was velopment of a mechanical means of masts for the Kings Navy, was limited known as the dry town because in all hauling logs and the opportunity was to the suitable timber growing near its 36 square miles there is no stream not overlooked by the mechanics who enough to the water to permit its large enough to float a log. had built and repaired the lumbering transportation by oxen to water on When the lumbermen turned to equipment of the period. which it could be floated to the ship. spruce and horses displaced the In the 90’s when the internal com- As new mills developed and lumber- oxen, the situation was changed only bustion engine was being perfected ing moved up the rivers the cut was temporarily. A logging road for horses and the horseless carriage was be- still limited to lumber that could be must be entirely down grade or at coming commonplace, lumbermen hauled to water on which it could be least generally level. A four turn road returning from visits to Bangor floated to the mills. was considered about the limit for brought reports of the progress The pine was hauled almost en- profitable lumbering. Furthermore, James and Ira Peavey were making tirely by ox team. Six, sometimes the necessity of driving these logs to with their log hauler. eight oxen, made a team. A small market limited the activities of the Vehicles powered by gasoline en- operation was one team cutting per- lumbermen to those varieties that gines were running successfully, but haps 600,000 feet BM in a season. would float, that is, spruce, fir, cedar these ran on wheels on the ground. Larger opertors had two or three and pine. But the log hauler must run on snow teams, and the size of crew and the It was impractical to mix in a drive and a wheel with its very limited sur- cut were increased correspondingly. even pine which floats nearly sub- face in contact with the surface of its The tree was “topped off” to make merged with the smaller spruce which roadbed would certainly slip if the sur- all of the marketable timber into one floats with a fourth of the log out of face were snow and ice. log and this long log with the bark water. When a lumberman could not Peavey’s solution of this difficulty removed from one end, was dragged resist the temptation and put a fine was to apply the power through two on a “go devil” or bob sled to the big pine with his spruce, the log large screws. This worked on ice and landing where it was sawed into short made so much trouble that it was a full scale model actually hauled logs lengths. usually pushed into a poke logan and on a good hard road, but the screw The horses of this period were not churned up the snow so much that it equal to this task while the oxen, the lost traction and in loose snow it was ordinary beasts of burden of the time, pretty nearly helpless. Peavey’s log Early type of “He has known the Lombard Steam crash of the falling Log Hauler with spruce...has trod upright boiler and the ruts to the engine. camps long ago...boasted the scale of the heavy loads that cricked o’er the frozen snow...” The Old Lumberman, Harold P. Andrews. hauler never got beyond the experi- generating power which is transmitted of their friendly conversation, Wood- mental stage. through a drive wheel on the shaft of bury told Lombard about his plans for In this same decade a carpenter the upper pair of trucks. Woodbury a log hauler. Woodbury went back to millwright and general handyman, envisaged this assembly reversed, his farm in Patten, where his dream of Johnson Woodbury, who was some- the track on the ground, the power a steam log hauler became only a thing of an inventor in his own right, applied to the trucks and the lags local tradition. and all his life had been familiar with moved by the revolving wheels. The Alvin Lombard, back in his shop in lumbering and its problems had his weight of engine providing the power Waterville, was a mechanic of more mind at work on the log hauler. Almost supported by the trucks would hold than average ability who already had any line of reasoning that he followed the lower half of the lags firmly to the a number of inventions to his credit. brought him to the necessity of some road bed, whatever its nature, thus Among these were a machine for form of track that would give the providing a track on which the trucks barking pulpwood, and a governor for wheels the traction that snow could rolled forward. The rear truck picked water driven turbines, which had not provide. Railroads would do this up the lag it had just passed over, come into general use. but were obviously not the solution while the forward truck laid down a lag The story, often told, of his start on of the problem. When he moved to extend the track. He demonstrated the log hauler relates that, going a house, beams were laid on the that this would work by rolling the home from work one evening on the ground for a short distance and the tread of his horsepower up an incline street car he fell in with an official of building moved along on rollers run- by turning the fly wheel. one of the big lumber companies. In ning on these tracks. As it pro- Woodbury did not have the facilities the course of the conversation about gressed, the beams in the rear were or the funds to develop his plans for a lumbering problems, this gentleman moved forward so that there was al- tractor that would run on snow, but at said that he was tired of wearing out ways a track in front of the moving a town meeting in which the voters horses hauling logs and suggested building. By repeating this process were considering the construction of that Lombard put his mind to work often enough, the building could be an oversized roller to pack the snow to constructing a machine that would re- moved a considerable distance, but make a hard road bed, he asked the place the horses. Lombard acted very obviously this method was impracti- town to wait until the next year when promptly on this suggestion, going at cal for hauling logs. there would be available a machine once to his shop and applying himself But Woodbury had in his barn a which would run on snow and would to the problem with such diligence “horsepower,” a treadmill commonly push or pull a snowplow. The town that in 24 hours he emerged with the used to provide power for a thrashing built the roller, which proved impracti- answer all set forth in a drawing and a machine or a drag saw for sawing cal and was soon abandoned. Later working model. Lombard arranged wood. The essential part of the tread- developments proved that Wood- with Waterville Iron Works to build the mill was an endless chain of wooden bury’s snow plow would have been first Lombard log hauler and his ap- lags running over two pairs of trucks successful. plication for a patent was filed Nov. 9, to which the lags were geared. Set at There is a story which relates a 1900. Patent No. 674,737 for a log- an angle the weight of the horses meeting of Woodbury and Alvin Lom- ging engine was issued May 4, 1901. walking on the lags tends to force the bard in the railroad station at Milli- The description, claims and draw- lags down hill, turning the wheels and nocket when they were leaving town ings of this patent are restricted to the after working as millwrights in the new mills of the Great Northern Paper Company. It is said that in the course A Peavey Log Hauler, Traction was obtained by revolving screws. traction and method of support. It dis- tractors equipped with the track cov- traction through trucks running on a closes a method of obtaining traction ered by the Lombard patent. These moveable track covered by the Lom- in which the engine is supported on were wheel tractors made to run on bard patent.