My major project for this winter was construction of the sawmill tramway, where push-carts of newly cut timbers can be rolled from the sawmill down to the planing mill and the lumber drying/loading area. With all of the cold weather, I have finished this scratchbuilding project.
Sawmill tramways appear to be seldom modeled. The company B.T.S. does offer a kit for a tramway to compliment their sawmill complex. My sawmill structures are from Keystone Locomotive kits (long out of production). I based my tramway on photos from the book series The Logging Railroad ERa of Lumbering in Pennsylvania by Ben Kline, Thomas Tabor, and Walter Casler. Book #9 of that series was especially helpful. The tramways almost always appeared quite spindly, and they never had guard rails of any kind.
My sawmill is on a narrow portion of my shelf layout, and is inside what was the closet of the spare bedroom. The visible shelf is more narrow here as the backdrop hides the connecting track to the Clinchfield Railroad, allowing the big Clinchfield H-4 consolidation to stomp into town and exchange cars once in awhile. I think of it as the sawmill being located in a rather narrow valley or “holler”, where the sawmill, powerhouse, boiler house, and planing mill all have to be arranged in linear fashion. Here’s a photo of the sawmill end of the tramway, with the corner of the powerhouse and it’s “driveshaft” to the sawmill visible.
My overall tramway is nearly three actual feet long, and it separates into three pieces for movement. This weekend,