Nostalgia & History > McGiffert Monday

Edward Hines Lumber Company, formed in 1928, operated 74 miles of logging railroad with two Shay's and a trio of rod engines in the Malheur National Forest out of Seneca, Oregon. Russell Lee came across the operation in July 1942, taking numerous images of which these three of a McGiffert at work were included. The third image is of specific interest in that it documents the clean up required intermittently to keep one these machines operating efficiently.
Photo credits the Library of Congress
Be of good cheer,
—Mac
www.lowellamrine.com

---

---

---

I'd been wondering how soon you were going to post some of these images.  Thanks for getting to them!

To add a bit to the story, the two McGiffert loaders Hines used were the only two Clyde built with internal combustion power, and also among the last McGifferts built. 

I do find it interesting that Russell did not get any photos of the Shay being used to switch the landing beyond the partial views in these images, though he did get a nice portrait of the engine crew: 

https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8c32447/

Lastly, I talked about the backstory of how Edward Hines came to Oregon and the two Shays they used on the Malheur operations on the following thread from a couple months ago:

 https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,6107745,6107749#msg-6107749

Thanks again!

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

Man that was some rough work back then! Wish I could have been a part of it!

Thanks for posting those.

A truly specialized piece of equipment - How dangerous the loggers' jobs looked!
Bob

How did the logs get carried to trackside where the crane could reach them?

Answer depended quite a bit on the era, but generally in the early years the logs would have been skidded from stump to rail by animals, mostly horses and high wheels in the pine logging regions of the Intermountain west. The Hines Oregon operation started up firmly in the tractor logging era, so while they did use a few horses in their early years to skid logs from specific stands most of their logging during the railroad logging era was done by Caterpillar gas and diesel tractors and logging arches. By the middle to later 1930s Hines was starting to replace a lot of railroad spur line logging with trucks, this particular scene was shot at a truck to railroad transfer, note especially in the last photo there is a ramp visible, logs would be rolled off of trucks down the ramp for the loader to pick up and place on flatcars. Russell spent some time around the Hines operation and did a pretty good job of photographing the entire logging process from cutting to the loading seen here, find the Library of Congress photo collection and then search “Malheur forest”. Lots of fascinating photos, many featuring the Hines crews at work.

One other note, these were shot towards the end of the McGiffert era on the Hines railroad, within a couple years the Seneca shops built their own large slide back loader capable of loading 80 cars a day. Eliminated the need for a switcher at the landings, trucks would dump their loads parallel to the tracks for hundreds of feet, the train crews would spot their log flats next to the logs, the sled-mounted loader would then work its way down the string loading cars as it went, pulling itself from car to car by winches and cables. Quite a fascinating process. By the end of rail logging they were using machines that would pick entire loads off the back of a truck and drop it onto a flatcar, which by that time period had all been equipped with staked log bunks.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

Posted from iPhone

timz Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How did the logs get carried to trackside where
> the crane could reach them?

If you can dream of a way to do it, the loggers did it first!

Examples:
Skidded (dragged) by animal power
Skidded by steam donkey engines
Hauled on ice roads using sleds and steam powered tractors with "caterpiller" type treads - up to about 20 sleds
Same, except using using wheeled wagons when no snow
Floated by stream, river, or lake
Flumes
"High Lines" - overhead cables with logs suspended.

-LD

 

Heres a Phoenix log hauler on ice road.

-LD



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/26 08:54 by LarryDoyle.

---

After visiting the two McGifferts at the Collier Logging Museum outside of Klamath Falls and posting the photos on TO, a number of discussions lead to the research by the family or museum that is tracing down every McGiffert that was built. The web has enough info to find two McGifferts in the deep south, one rebuilt and operating to some extent and another static. Also found info on the McGiffert under water in British Columbia. Interesting beasts and stories for sure.

Another web search found McGifferts frames with traditional built rotating cranes mounted on the top. Logging machinery is an interesting topic but as mentioned above some of the creations are pretty wild. Much of the documentation is for equipment scrapped out around 1960, over 60 years ago. There are a few sources of info on the web, pretty fascinating. RYPN is amazing, also the Heavy Equipment Forum has a logging section, mostly diesel powered, cable equipment leading into hydraulic era. Logging is pretty rough but all you need is trees and logs and a logging Contractor will show up.

+ Duluth Transportation Museum, thanks.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/26 10:43 by TCnR.

The CAT's got used for skidding, while the Best was for yarding and clean up work.
—Mac

---

---

Collier has a number of decay in place tractors, interesting but sad. The Powerland Heritage Museum has a large number of restored tractors and a number of other amazing restorations. Haven't been there but all the info is very impressive.

https://www.antiquepowerland.com/

Clyde built around a thousand McGiffert loaders between 1902 and 1930. John Taubeneck compiled a list of most of them from available corporate records. Six are known to survive, two each at Collier Logging Museum in Oregon and the Southern Forest Heritage Museum in Louisiana, the one resting upside down in a British Columbia lake, and one beautifully restored machine at the Duluth Transportation Museum. A seventh may or may not still exist in Mexico.

As for tractors, Best and Holt merged in 1925 to form Caterpillar. Both companies had built sixty horsepower tractors before the merger, the post-merger “Cat Sixty” quickly became the gold standard in the logging industry. Diesel tractors started replacing gas machines in the middle 1930s. The smaller Thirty horsepower tractors did get used a lot, in some skidding but more often in lighter work around landings as seen in the photos on this thread.

Lastly, the Phoenix/Lombard machine really only saw use in the northeast and upper Midwest, in areas where logging tended to be done in winter due to boggy conditions in warmer months. A few operators with roots in that area that moved west tried sled logging but generally without success.

Edited to add there were a couple McGifferts rebuilt with shovels on the Brooks-Scanlon Lumber Company operations out of Bend, Oregon. Not sure about others.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

Posted from iPhone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/26 10:17 by JDLX.

The arch was an early technological leap for moving cut logs to the nearby railhead. At firat made of wood and pulled by oxen the advancements continued into big steel of the post WWII days. Here's an intermediate example with a random looking tractor at the Collier Loggin Museum. Later designs made use of a tractor rear mounted winch and then moved into modern hydraulic log skidder designs. Basically the same principals though, lift and pull through the woods.

Tractors and such played into the business designs of where the rail stubs would be, how many vs larger collection points vs cost of equipment and then into truck logging and so on.
hth.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/26 12:12 by TCnR.

---

I have a discussion of tractor logging and arch design and evolution on my McCloud River website at the following link:

mccloudriverrailroad.com/LumberCompany/TractorLogging.htm

While the photos and information are specific to McCloud operations the general practices are similar to what got applied across the industry.

Fascinating subject.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

Posted from iPhone

As a postscript in thanks for all the additional images and information, these two images, both by Russell Lee, of log storage in Colwitz County, Washington (October 1941) and the wharf area of San Diego filled with cut lumber to be used for wartime housing demands, June 1941 seemed appropriate. Thanks again to all.
—Mac

---

---