Horses

Wouldyou,

John Menzies at the Birdsville museum had one of those gear drives set up and his mules walked around in circles to drive a shaft that ran a chaff cutter. Suppose you could say the mules worked for their supper.

Lang

It's a very versatile form of power arrangement to have on a farm, it could be moved to where you needed it and to drive whatever you wanted to be driven.

This is from a catalogue of about the 1940's.


regards greenie [smiley=vrolijk_1.gif]

There was a short (5 mile) narrow gauge line in our area years ago, it started where the timber was and ended at the sawmill, but, there was no loco.
The line was built so that the loaded wagons would roll to the mill on the power of gravity, then they were pulled back to the bush with horses, circa 1900.

Saw some photos showing construction of the irrigation canals at Griffith. (NSW)
Horse drawn scoops involved and blokes with shovels.
Everyone worked so hard in those days, don't think I'd last long.

Greenie, That's interesting, the exact unit, apart from a stamped serial no there is nothing to identify it. I wonder if Sunshine made it or were agents. Didn't know there was an over running clutch there, will have to get it working. Your catalogue could be earlier as the one I am looking at is pre war, has the newer Sundial engines and no horse works. Regards, David.

There was a very good series of photos at the Hume weir resort (I think? it was a while back) of the horses with the buckets & being used to compact the earth when building the weir wall.

I believe its the only wall of that construction type left in the world!

www.flickr.com/photos/oakleystudios/3218...hotostream/lightbox/
www.flickr.com/photos/oakleystudios/3218431835/

wouldyou,
I wondering how many times those horses had to pull that scoop up out of the dam to build a dam of that size.How many cubic metres in the dam and how big is the scoop. : : : :
Colin

Which dam?
Lake Hume didn't need scooping as such, and the role of horses was very limited.
It was built in a mechanised era, and the public works departments from both states had construction railways of three gauges to do the bulk of the transport of material from the excavation site to the deposition site.

Roderick B Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

HOPE THIS COMES OUT IM LEARNING TO SCAN