Huntsman Tramway
| Huntsman Tramway | |
|---|---|
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_02.jpg) Back of wood with team of oxen
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| Route length: | More than 1 km |
| Gauge : | 1600 mm ( Irish track ) |
The Huntsman Tramway was a forest railway over a kilometer long with wooden rails south of Deloraine in Tasmania .
history
Wynyard trader James Cruikshank Cumming set up a sawmill on the left hand side of Huntsman Road in 1918 just before it crosses the Meander River. In partnership with his brother Louis, he founded Cumming Brothers Pty Ltd in 1920, which sawed wood for forty years until it was sold to APPM Ltd in 1960, which then operated the sawmill until the early 1980s.
The Huntsman sawmill was one of the largest sawmills in the area. It employed almost 20 men. Three of them cut the trees with an ax, whereupon an ox driver moved them to the forest railway with oxen . There they were loaded onto the horse-drawn forest railway and brought to the sawmill. An International truck converted by Russell Allport was later used on the Waldbahn .
Around 1936 the Huntsman sawmill acquired a gasoline winch with over two kilometers of ropes for transporting wood. However, it did not prove itself due to the complex and dangerous operation, so that from 1939 caterpillar tractors were used to move wood.
The sawn timber was transported by horse and cart to Deloraine until 1940, from where it was transported by rail to Launceston . From there it was shipped to mainland Australia or marketed via Devonport .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d Jill Cassidy: Deloraine's industrial Heritage - a jurvey jointly funded by the Australian Heritage Commission and the Queen Victoria Museum, 1986. pp. 66-69.
Coordinates: 41 ° 41 ′ 56.4 ″ S , 146 ° 35 ′ 44 ″ E