Extraction by horse and sledge.Unknown location
Photograph is courtesy of Inverness, Ross and Skye Forest District and staff at their Fort Augustus office.
No information with this photograph which could have been part of the display in the Farigaig Forest Visitor Centre at one time. This detailed photograph shows a horse being used to pull a sledge loaded with spruce logs cut into what seems to be three metre pulp mill length products.
The horse is harnessed in Scandinavian style equipment with shafts back to a metal cross bar which is then attached via a large link to the drawbar of the sledge. The sledge may have a turning loading table or bar to allow the runners to turn relatively freely when negotiating a bend. Note the hand winch and chains clamping the axe sned products to the sledge frame. Over the handle of the winch is a lightweight pair of spring loaded timber tongs which were very often used by the fellers and axe snedders to drag or help lift the pieces of pulp or logs into piles near to the rackways ready for extraction.
During the early 1960s several types of horse harness and sledge styles were imported from Europe and Scandinavia to try to improve the efficiency of the horse dragging operation and also to cope with the shift to ‘short wood working’ (converting the trees to finished products at the tree stump).
For long pole length tree extraction a different type of sledge was used which had a large arch like an inverted U into which individual log butts were hauled up with a series of small winches and tied off thus keeping them clear of the ground and stumps as the horse pulled the load to the roadside.
Can anyone recognise the horseman and location? Has anyone worked this type of equipment?
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Groups: Forestry in Action, Horses at work in Forests, Mystery and unknown