Page:Popular Mechanics 1928 01.pdf/14

 it and floated down. But here, machinery has eliminated not only labor, but danger. If the logs jam, a cable from the tractor is thrown around the key log, and with sixty horsepower straining at the steel line, that particular timber is jerked out, and the jam freed. No longer do men with canthooks risk their lives amid the tumbling logs, and dynamite is no more needed to free the crossed timbers in the stream. If logs run wild, as they do in high water, sliding over the dam at the mill, the modern lumberjack, turned into an imitation cowboy, "ropes" them as they whirl in the stream, and the tractor does the rest, pulling them gently to the bank and snaking them back up to the mill.



Where there is no stream at the bottom of the aerial railway, several new mechanical means of getting the logs to the mill have been put into use this year. If a large area is to be logged, a single-track railroad is laid without much grading, and over it comes a train of great flat cars, pulled by what seems to be an interurban express car. As a matter of fact, it contains a Diesel engine, direct-connected to a generator, providing current for electric motors on the wheels. This is an entirely new factor in logging, which has been tried during the past year with great success. But, if a track cannot be laid to the base of the mountain, the tractor is called in again, and, by several methods, the logs are taken to the mill. First, there is the "bummer," a four-wheeled dolly, of which two are towed behind the tractor, a third of the log being raised up, also by tractor power, and rested on the bummer, while the remainder trails behind. Then there is the old and simple method of "snaking" the logs out, by means of chains attached to the tractor, as many as six or seven logs being handled in this manner in tandem by two men and tractor. 