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Cargill Limited
Cargill
Brian Westhouse
Peculiar looking homemade engine. Note the strange middle
wheels!
Photo by John Boyd / GTR - CNR employee 1881 - 1931
The logging operations carried on by Cargill Limited, Cargill
Ont., in Bruce County, are planned and carried out in a thoroughly modern
manner. The company operate in a mixed stand of hardwood and softwood
in the Greenock swamp, practically all of which is owned by Cargill Limited.
The skidding operations include the use of a Ligerwood steam skidder which
is mounted on a flat car woth a 40-foot spar. Cables are run from the
spar out into the bush 20 rods on each side of the track and the logs
are piled up 15 to 20 feet high along the track. All kinds of logs are
skidded together, incluging poles from 2 inches diameter up to the largest
logs. Nothing is left on the land but the brush and stumps.
The loading operations are handled by a steam log loader made by Cargill
Limited. This is also mounted on a short flat car. It has a 30-foot boom
and will handle about (estimated board measure) 1,000 feet to the lift
in logs, or will load one of the company's cars in three lifts of the
largest logs, or smaller logs in a sling. The log loader can also lift
the logging cars off the track and pile them up at a skidway. The ability
of the loader to remove cars from the track permits of it being kept on
the main track all the time, following up the skidder. The loader also
has a device attached to the engine, so designed that when a car is loaded,
a line can be stretched out and the loaded car moved ahead very easily
without any loss of time. While this operation is going on the boom of
the loader is also swinging another car onto the track.
The logging locomotive operated by Cargill Limited, is a standard gauge
and is equipped with gasoline motive power, thus removing all danger of
fire in the swamp. The track is standard gauge of 35-lb. rails. The locomotive
makes two trips a day, drawing 12 cars, which is sufficient to keep the
mill running continuously.
After the logs are loaded on the cars in the bush by the loader they never
again touch the ground. They are unloaded in a sorting mill, which has
tracks and conveyors running from it in each direction and is so located
that each block or log is delivered to its proper place to be worked up
into the finished product for which it is intended, the whole process
being completed without further handling.
Canada Lumberman/Collection of Brian Westhouse
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