Incline Trackage

Locomotives were pulled to the top of inclines and used to move cars just like below the incline.  I have seen a picture or two of locomotives being pulled up an incline and at least one with the loco piled up at the bottom when the cable broke.  The two inclines that I have some information on have landings miles from the incline so yarders or other cable devices would not be practical.

Practical guessing-I assume that the track at the top of the incline was similar to that at the bottom. Both need a passing track or equivalent to be able to efficiently move empty cars up and loaded cars down.  If any type of carriage was used, this would have it's own spur to get it out of the way to be able to move the cars into position to lower or pull empties out of the way.  Some inclines used the weight of loaded cars to pull up the empties.

I also assume that there were service and other tracks at the top of the incline, but these do not need to be right at the top.  The Algoma Lumber Co. had a wye near the top of it's incline as it had timber sales both north and south of the incline.  Trackage ran several miles in both directions.

A little quick research- Logging Railroads of the West by Kramer Adams shows a picture of the top of an incline showing several switches and a picture of what used to be a locomotive that fell victim to a parted cable. 

Terry

I'm not sure that full log cars would be pulled to the top.

The only incline that I am familiar with was used to send loaded cars down to the Yosemite Railroad and empties back to the top of the incline.  It seems to me that sending loaded log cars to the top of an incline is like sending loaded coal hoppers to the coal mine.  The loaded log cars would probably be sent to the top of incline by the logging railroads geared locomotives, but then the incline would be used to lower the log cars to either a mill lower down on the mountain, or to a connection with another railroad to send the logs to a mill some distance away form the incline.

Carl Sparks' Layout

Carl Sparks' Seymour Valley Logging and Railway Co. layout has a working incline that I've seen in person.  His site ( http://www3.telus.net/SV/page3.html [photos] and http://www3.telus.net/SV/page2.html [trackplan]) shows the trackage at the top of his incline and a short description of how he operates it based on certain prototype practices.  Basically, there's a switchback at the top, and the locomotive from the woods shoves loaded cars onto the tail track.  A block car, linked to a donkey engine, couples to the loaded cars and pulls them out of the tail track onto the incline itself, and lowers the cars down the incline.  The process is repeated for every loaded car individually, and operates in reverse to get empties back to the top. 

Carl's arrangement may not be appropriate for every prototype, but it does work well for model operation.  The block car allows the whole thing to be used without touching the equipment except for using an uncoupling pick, and the track layout is also similar to inclines that did not employ block cars.

Decline

It was normally,but not always. mostly downhill to get logs from the landing (logging site) to the top of the incline.  Both rod and geared locomotives provided the power.  The Algoma Lumber Company had 21 miles of railroad at the top of the incline and 2,5 miles to the mill at the bottom.  A geared and a rod locomotive provided the power at the top of the incline.

Rarely it was necessary to pull loaded log cars up an incline to get the logs to the mill.  There was no other economical way to get those logs to the mill.

These operations were called a "decline."

Terry

Incline logging

Thanks guys. I guess I wasn't to clear. I know loaded cars were not pulled up the incline. I wanted to know how loaded cars were delivered  to the top of the incline to be lowered down the incline.

Terry, I have that book and never noticed that photo on page 61.

Thanks

The Roach

Incline

Hey Rob,

Thanks for the links. That looks like it may be a good way to do what I want.

They'd use the cable car to

They'd use the cable car to pull a locomotive up to the top of the plateau, or mesa, or shelf, or whatever, and then build a railroad like any other railroad on top - a single track off towards the freshest timber.