Some crazy mountain logging railways

[tossedman]

I stumbled across this blog this afternoon. Check out the inclines on these rails of the Torase Forest Railway.

https://sikokumori.exblog.jp/19958482/

 

And here are some more on the Uyose Forest Railway Okuyama. I could not imagine being the brakeman riding down the mountain on some of these cars. Pretty ingenious as to how they used levers to increase the brake pressure. Also, it looks like they used dogs to haul the empty trucks back up the mountain.

https://sikokumori.exblog.jp/19958933/

 

Cheers eh,

 

Todd

 

 

[cteno4]

Wow! This one looks like some fantasy railroad scene.

 

https://sikokumori.exblog.jp/iv/detail/?s=19958482&i=201307%2F05%2F60%2Ff0231460_1431239.jpg

 

jeff

[tossedman]

Looks more like a roller coaster than a logging railroad. 

[cteno4]

Yeah like some Rube Goldberg gravity game.

 

jeff

[Cat]

26 minutes ago, tossedman said:

Looks more like a roller coaster than a logging railroad. 

Well, there's always The 'Devils Shingles that workers used to ride down the Mount Washington Railway on!
 

https://www.thecog.com/the-devils-shingle

[cteno4]

That was a pretty straight shot compared to this twisty turnie! They would shoot straight off those curves on shingles!

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

Even funnier, a lot of these kinda lines, to get the cars down with log loaded on them, they'd just let gravity do the work. A single person would be sitting/standing on the car handling the brake. 

[Beaver]

Not just timber. Some of the larger forestry operations spawned company villages deep in the mountains that could only be reached by the railway. And the passenger and other cars built to serve these villages often returned under gravity too. There's a video of the Yakushima Forest Railway showing a whole passenger car full of foresters wives and children descending a mountain under the control of a single brake. While the foresters bringing the timber down the mountains sit astride the logs using a rope to operate the brake, looking rather like children playing horsies, because the load completely covers the car leaving nowhere to stand. 

[tossedman]

Someone has modelled a forest railway.