Art & Words by
HOWARD B. TAYLOR

The steam traction engine was designed for farming. They used it to thresh and tried to plow and harvest with it. Although it did have a horizontal boiler it was very heavy. It did about as much plowing with its wheels as with the plow. Between harvest it was idle so someone put a couple of them to work in the woods and they stayed there.

One was converted to a locomotive, the other was simply belted to a set of drums and served as the donkey in skidding the logs to the landing. The train took one load. The logs could be any length which could negotiate the curves as the trucks were only connected by the logs.