Wyssen, Cable Lasoo and FC powered Ropeways
Two files containing about 65 Head Quarters Mechanical Development Committee Reports from 1950 to 1958 were saved from destruction by Jim Christie former Forestry Commission HQ, Plant Engineer. Jim, from Crook of Devon, has kindly made the reports available for scanning and entry onto this website. Please open the PDF to see this full report.
Can anyone remember working any of these Ropeway systems and how difficult they were to operate?
Report No 62 is in some ways a milestone report as it lays out the approximate costs of working with the most promising looking cable crane technology of the period. The statement in the report saying that it is expensive and can only be justified where there are no other means of extraction probably ended the run of work with such machines for quite some time. The next major breakthrough in ropeways arrived with the introduction of the Ferguson tractor mounted Isachsen winch with short tower in around 1961. This was the start of another era in forest development and history!
Groups: Forestry Mechanical Engineering Reports , Timber harvesters, processors, forwarders and cable cranes