336 LOGGING 
logging trucks upon which were mounted two hand brakes. 
The tender car was connected by chains and rods to the logging 
car. It was seldom used since the engineers were able to control the 
speed of the car from the machine. 
The loaded car weighed approximately 20 tons and carried 
from 5000 to 7000 board feet of timber. 
An improvement on the method of operating similar inclines 
suggested by a logger is to fasten the cable around the center of 
the load and when the latter has nearly reached the summit to 
increase the speed of the car so that it will cross the divide and 
drop down the other slope. The sheave block should be hung 
on a swivel about 20 feet above the center of the track. 
A two-cable system^ was developed by a western operator to 
lower timber from mountain slopes to a railroad at the base, 
about 1200 feet below. Inclines with lateral spurs were con- 
structed and the loaded cars brought to them for lowering. 
While most of the inclines were straight, on one there was 1200 
feet of track on a 12 degree curve. Power for lowering the cars 
was provided by a 11- by 13-inch hoisting engine placed at the 
top of the slope, which had a drum capacity of 12,000 feet of 
l|-inch cable. The engine was mounted on a sled so that it 
could be moved readily under its own power from one set-up 
to another. 
The lowering line led from the engine, placed on the left of the 
incline, through a three-sheave block on a lowering car, and then 
back to a stump near the engine but on the opposite side of the 
track. The lowering car had a steel frame supported on two 
single trucks, on which was mounted a compound lowering 
block. 
The dead section of the lowering line rested on skids placed 
along the track and at right angles to it. The moving line rested 
on sheaves along the side of the track, spaced at 100 foot intervals. 
On the inside of the curves the cable led over rollers, while on 
the outside of curves the dead line was held in place by brackets 
which automatically released or picked up the line when the car 
had passed a given point. 
The "lowering" car pulled the empty log cars from the base of 
the incline to one of the lateral spurs, where they were left on 
a siding, and were later taken to the loading point bj^ a geared 
^ See Logging in the Douglas Fir Region, bj- W. H. Gibbons. 
