When Knitting Was a Manly Art

It appears so…

I’ve been too busy the past two weeks to even think about the blog. Even my days off have been wrapped up in in prior commitments and work that just keeps getting put off.

Yesterday was a scheduled fun day and I made the most of it. I signed up for a photo excursion on the Chelatchie Prairie Railroad. Can you imagine a whole day taking pictures of a single train?

The morning started with a 4am alarm and didn’t finish until I climbed into bed at nearly 11pm. More than 70 pictures (I promise I won’t share *all* of them) and a chance to ride in the cab of the steam engine.

I’m 60 years old and I’m falling in love with steam…

I’ll see if I can keep posting intervals under two weeks….

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It’s Easter and I should have been relaxing and working on the little sweater, but instead I headed into the Oregon Coast Range to search out a Steam Donkey.

I had got some information about the location of a couple of donkeys and though it’s been raining on and off the past couple of days, this morning was dry and so we headed for the hills. Once we had left the truck, the trip was completely off trail. We had a compass, a map and some general directions. By dumb luck we stumbled upon the abandoned logging railroad grade and started following it in the general direction given by our informant. Mostly the rain held off, with only a couple of showers, but we were swaddled in rain gear and stumbling through sword fern and crawling over numerous windfalls, but finally crossed a little stream and there stood a little vertical boiler for a donkey. If you look at the above link, you’ll get an idea the relationship of the boiler to the setup of the donkey.

This chunk of cast iron has probably been sitting here for 70 or 80 years. It’s actually a pretty small boiler and considering that we also found two boiler water tanks, we expected to find more. But no further luck today.

Physically worn out and starting to get pretty damp throughout, we headed back out to the truck and came home to dry out and get some dinner. Very pleasant day overall…

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This past Christmas season one of Portland, Oregon’s steam engines, Southern Pacific #4449, was used to pull public excursion trains.Tickets were sold out and it was a very succesfull couple of weeks, with most of the money going to support of the 4449 and to provide money towards it’s new home.

Eileen’s cousin is a former cameraman for a local TV station and set up his camera beside the tracks and managed to capture some pretty nice shots of the 4449 coming into the departure siding.

A cold snowy day, lots of steam and haunting sound of steam whistles. This is just about 1 1/2 minutes of the whole video, but it’s a great view of a great steam engine.

This file is more than 30M bytes in size and will take a long time to download if you don’t have broadband. And due to storage constraints on my webhost, this file will probably be deleted in a couple of weeks.

http://www.gaiser.org/4449.avi

UPDATE: AVI file deleted. Please contact me if you would like a copy

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A beautiful, clear and cold night and the stars are shining brightly. Not the best time to view the heavens, but some of my favorites are up tonight. The Pleiades is high in the sky and Orion The Hunter is just starting to climb over the trees. Time to get the telescope out again.

First Sunday off in over a month and we spent it in the woods hunting down logging railroads. Our friend and guide Ken joined us for the final weekend behind Stimson Lumber Company gates. Ken convinced us to try to find a logging camp above an incline (think — railroad down a steep slope, lowering rail cars of logs with a steam donkey). We had visited the area last year and found the remains of the the donkey and the bases of a support building, but no camp.

This year, due to logging in the area, we were able to drive to about 1/2 mile from the incline and with Ken’s help found the logging camp. One of the best preserved remains we have found so far. Oregon State Forestry Department has worked to conserve the area by preventing logging the site and it’s far enough off the beaten path the it hasn’t been disturbed much.

The area was burned in a forest fire in about 1932 and the camp was abandoned at that time. We found the remains of 10 bunkhouses with 8 bunks/building and a cook house. When the fire came through, everything but the log foundations burned and the bunks dropped down on the logs.

Here’s a pair of bunks, set end-to-end laying on the bunkhouse log foundation.

And a pair of ‘Misery Whips’ - two man cross-cut saws - bent into twisted shapes.

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First knitting - this *is* a knitting blog, after all.. uhmmm.. Nothing for the past three days. My life is a bit disrupted right now with late night working, later rising and sheep problems. I hope to get back to work on the Feather and Fan tomorrow, But there’s still the issue of B.C.

Animals. Our old man is still alive this evening, but I’m pretty sure this is his last day on earth. Very weak, head down and not the least bit interested in food. If I had a clean, reliable way to put him down, I would have done it this afternoon. As I don’t we will wait for tomorrow.

Dimples. We spent the day in the Oregon Coast Range with our 70+ year old hiking partner on yet another logging railroad grade. This was probably the longest one we’ve hike - over three miles of flat grade and about 6 collapsed trestle requiring that we climb down to the bottom of each gully and back up to the grade on the other side. I won’t bore with pictures. Well, except one. Tie dimples.

A short course on building a logging railroad. Logging lines were never meant to last long and so rather than laying a solid base of crushed rock on which the ties and rail would sit, the ties of a logging railroad were placed directly on the ground and crushed rock or ballast was dumped between the ties and the rails spiked to the ties. Later when the line was abandoned and the rails and ties were pulled up there remained a pattern of high and low areas that are still visible today, some 60+ years later.

In this picture tie dimples are visible slanting from upper right to lower left. The crushed rock seems to grow more moss and so the lines of green covered rock and more brown color strips where the ties were is plainly visible (red lines at lower left).

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I’m having a heck of a time getting a good photo of the Feather and Fan shawl. Currently working on row 75 of 190. This isn’t the greatest picture in the worlld, but it’s the best I’ve been able to get with this dark green yarn.

Yesterday we spent the day just south of Dee, Oregon, searching a rugged ridge line for the remains of the rail grade and trestles of the Oregon Lumber Company. The climb up to the top of the ridge was one of the hairest climbs I’ve made in a while. We were climbing on a 50-60 degree slope of loose basalt and dirt, with nothing but Vine Maple and Douglas Fir trees to hang onto. The last section was a traverse across a nearly solid rock face and finally to the top of the ridge and a gently sloping backside. We found the railroad grade and two of the collapsed trestles.

The first was down across a stream bed and it was only a bit of luck that we sighted the square timbers amongst the underbrush. Standing on the timbers is Ken, our 70+ year old hiking partner.

The second trestle was a combination of easy and hard. We knew about were it was located, as we had found it’s collapsed bents at the bottom of a rocky cliff, which was the primary reason for our tough initial hill climb.

On the top, the approach to the trestle was through a cut that was hacked through fairly solid rock. No scraping dirt here, though the rock tends to break into flat shaley pieces.

Once through the cut, we stood at the top of a precipice looking over at what was actually two trestles. The one closest to us spanned the gap to a rock pillar, which still has the remains of the trestle on it, and then continued across another gap to the other side. Eileen stands on the edge taking pictures and the actual remains of the trestle surface to her left.

Closeup of the central rock pillar

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We, once again, spent the day in the Oregon Coast Range hunting down old logging rail lines. This time we took along Eileen’s new toy, a used 4×4 ATV which made life a lot easier getting to some remote places.

Our first trip was down to the area of rail camp named Belding. This rail line was first constructed in the early 1900’s and the *very* steep road took us between a pair of tunnels and one of the earliest steel bridges/trestles still on the line. If you look closely at the top of the bridge, you’ll see the date ‘1925′, the year of it’s construction. Tunnel in the background

And I’m constantly amazed where we find pieces of old rail. This one’s about 10 feet about the ground.

Kitties… Nothing new on the Rumley front. Still sick. Still not eating.

Finally… I start work tomorrow evening. It looks like I’ll be working an evening shift, which means less time for blogging, but I’ll try to find time earlier in the day.

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A *long* day on Larch Mountain. This mountain was logged by the Bridal Veil Lumber Company from the late 1880’s until sometime in the 1930’s. Most of the trip was cross-country and with the previous days of rain, all the undergrowth was still wet and the ground slick and muddy. Ended the trip wet and dirty, but an enjoyable day.

An enameled water or milk pitcher found at the Bridal Veil Lumber Company logging camp.

This along with boots and plates and mugs and parts of the trains that supplied the camp and old carbon filament light bulbs. Oh for a good metal detector.

Very pretty decorations on the side of the remains of a Montag & Cleave stove

Embossed front of the Montag & Cleave stove

The scattered remains of one of about four or five unmarked tin and cast iron cook stoves

After we left the camp, one our guides decided to take us down an old skid road and skidway to the remains of an old Bull Donkey or Roading Donkey. There were two types of donkeys used in the woods. The smaller of the two was the Spool Donkey which had a spool or capstain and larger ones used a cable drum. These were used for the big jobs in the woods. This particular one was used to cable the logs down the mountain on the skidroad and skidway we had just traveled. This is part of one of two drums on this donkey.

Stands and bearings for one of the two drums

Bearing and parts of the second drum

This donkey also had a spool on the front drum. It can be just seen on the right hand side of the first photo. This is also one of the few spools we have found which has a manufacturer’s name imbossed on it - ‘Murray Bros.’ - on both the spool and the plate holding it in position. This one also has a Patent date of ‘DEC 90′. That’s December of 1890. Here’s one we found on another cross-country adventure last October. Exactly the same spool.

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Did you ever have a project that you can’t get motivated on?

The PNW Shawl currently leads in my ‘Lack of Motivation’ listing. It’s an easy pattern, and I should just get to work and find what my problems are and get it working again, but….

I’m enjoying the second toe up sock, though it’s not as fancy and interesting, so I think I’ll just continue with it and see if my attitude for the shawl improves. If not, I may just put it away for a while and start something else. I’ve got a couple projects and yarn just waiting to start.

At the beginning of this year, there was an open house at the Brooklyn Roundhouse. At that time I posted a few pictures of two of the three steam locomotives owned by the city of Portland. We learned later that there are folks working on the various lococmotives nearly every weekend and so the doors to the roundhouse are open and we visited again this past Sunday, taking along a friend who hasn’t had a chance to see the big locos up close.

The third steam locomotive that Portland owns is still under restoration, but the progress since January was impressive and I have to share a picture (though it probably isn’t that impressive to those who hadn’t seen it earlier).

The Oregon Railway & Navigation #197 served Columbia River routes from 1905 until it’s retirement in the 1950’s. It served as a display at a local park until 1996 when it was moved to the roundhouse with the other two engines and restoration started. It’s the oldest of the three and while it still doesn’t look like much yet, it is much better off than it’s previous life as a park decoration.

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that some knitting still goes on around here…

My first complete toeup sock. Actually the second attempt, but the first one was so obviously too large that I stopped after turning the heel and have since ripped it out. Second one was immediately started to avoid SSS, though that’s not usually a problem with me. My plans for tomorrow are to figure out what’s wrong with the PNW Shawl and restart it.

Today was spent in the Oregon Coast Range, searching the remains of another logging railroad. C.H. Wheeler started logging on the Oregon Coast. The coastal town of Wheeler, Oregon is named after him. He then moved into the Coast Range. We were searching for the remnants of his log pond and a relatively short 2 or 3 mile grade from it. The area the pond inhabited was fairly easy to find from some of the old maps we had, but the grade was a bit harder, as we only had a hand-drawn map from another logging railroad chaser. After nearly 40 minutes of wandering through the area defined on the map, we came upon an obvious rail grade cut through a hill that ended above a small stream. A careful climb down the hill revealed a number of square cut timbers with *large* iron bolts imbedded in them. The remains of a trestle. The stream was small and easily crossed and laying on the hillside on that side were more square cut timbers with more iron bolts. We climbed the slope and discovered another cut and to our surprise, the remains of an old 1920’s automobile. Most of the body along with two doors and most of the engine. Sitting there for 80+ years, it’s amazing anything was still there. We continued on the grade for another mile or so, but it was getting late and we decided we’d return tomorrow. No camera today, as I didn’t expect to find much interesting, but I’ll take one along tomorrow. A tiring, but enjoyable day finding and exploring some of the history of the early days of the Pacific Northwest.

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