Timber!
In my previous articles I have described the different timbers involved in construction of horse drawn farm vehicles. How did these timbers get to the Wheelwright and Cartwright? This brings us to different types of wheeled vehicle.
Felling timber was one thing but extracting the logs from the forest required a special piece of equipment known as a Timber Bob. The one illustrated came from the Boduan Estate on the Lleyn Peninsula in north Wales.
It is a simple vehicle comprising a long shaft, an axle and two wheels. It had been surmised that the axle and wheels in the original may have come from an artillery carriage.
The model has wheels with 14 spokes and are some 155 mm in diameter at 1/12th scale. Normally carts in use in Wales have 12 spoked wheels so it is possible that there is an artillery connection.
How the Timber Bob works to move logs is illustrated below.
Interestingly there has been resurgence of use of similar designs in recent years using more modern equipment.
The British Horse Loggers are very active and frequently demonstrates at Agricultural Shows. There is great demand for their services as the use of the horse causes far less damage in woodland than modern timber harvesting equipment.
Once the logs are removed to a clearing they may be loaded onto a Timber Carriage. The Timber Carriage below is from the Erddig Estate near Wrexham in north Wales.
Such carriages were used to move a quantity of logs to a timber yard for conversion into usable timber. Loading of the carriage would be carried out by placing suitable timber baulks as ramps, wrapping a chain around the log and with horses on the opposite side pulling the logs up onto the carriage.
The model of the Erddig Timber carriage illustrated below is 1/8th scale and some 0.8 metres in length. This particular vehicle is of fixed length but other examples such as the one above had a centre pole that allowed the rear wheels to be moved thus extending the length of the carriage.
It is of interest to note that whilst usually a wheel would be shod with a continuous tyre of wrought iron applied hot, the front wheels here are different. The wheel is shod with ‘strakes’. These are short segments of metal fitted hot across each joint in the wheel rim. They are nailed into place whilst still hot in order to pull the joints tight.
When loaded these carriages were very heavy and required a lot of horse power to move. It would not be unusual to have six horses pulling one. Whilst living in north Wales I was told by an elderly gent about the transport of logs between Ruthin and Wrexham. Two timber carriages were involved each with six horses. At the foot of a particularly steep hill they would stop and the horses from the rear carriage would be attached to the front carriage. All twelve would pull the carriage to the top, be unharnessed and return to the bottom of the hill to repeat the process with the second carriage. I’m not sure that today we realise how much easier it is to transport goods.
Today we move more timber but need even greater horsepower!
At the Timber Yard for conversion into usable timber the heavy logs would still need to be moved to the Saw Pit. This required a smaller Timber Bob. The model illustrated has an arch axle and the original was used at Timothy’s Timber Yard in Ton Pentre, Rhondda.
I hope you found this of interest and perhaps it has given you some ideas for trackside dioramas!
John Tonen
