Durbin Rocket and Water Quality

In the afternoon on Thursday, the group visited Durbin to take another water quality check of the Greenbrier River and to ride the Durbin Rocket. The test location was about 100 yards from the train depot near a campground. The river flow rate here was brisk. After calibrating the probes for our Vernier equipment, David Williams and I determined that the water at this location was in the upper end of fair. This correlates to our expectations from historical data that Steve Beckelhimer and Pat McKee discussed with the group earlier. We are collecting one more water quality point today near Lewisburg to observe the differences.

Durbin Rocket

The second part of the stop involved researching and riding the Durbin Rocket. The Durbin Rocket is a Climax Locomotive built in 1910 for the Moore-Keppel Lumber Company and weighs 55 tons. The excursion lasted a couple hours and covered rail ways along the Greenbrier River. The locomotive remains coal-powered and operates June through October.

William Strait and the Durbin Rocket

Think about the following:

• How would testing the water quality downstream of a data point affect the outcome?
• Why would the lower weight of the Climax create a faster engine compared to a Shay?

Piston on Climax Locomotive

Gaudineer Knob

Thursday morning had us departing our overnight home at the Inn at Snowshoe and making the way up to Gaudineer Knob. The main feature of the region is a virgin forest of fifty acres. The area contains a limited variety of species of spruce, maple, and beech. The forest differs from our visit to Cathedral State Forest in that the forest is much wetter and the floor of the forest contains much more growth of smaller plants. It was hard to determine an exact ratio, but spruce trees were a majority specie in the forest in number, but the hardwoods species are taller in the forest.

We measured the soil pH level in the virgin forest and it showed a relatively acidic 4.25. This compares to the 3.5 we observed in Cathedral State Park. Cathedral did however contain hemlock trees that are absent at Gaudineer Knob. The tannins in spruce are not as acidic as those in hemlock. The forest floor and decaying matter was covered in moss and ferns were present. It is a region that must be visited to see unique and rare forest that has avoided harvesting.

Beverly Wood Manufacturing: Colonial Millwork & Armstrong

Knives for moldings

The group started the day by visiting Colonial Millwork in Beverly, WV.  Colonial Millwork makes mouldings for cabinets and floors. Typically the mill has 800,000 board feet of lumber on hand of various species that includes exotic woods from around the world. They purchase lumber from the eastern U.S. and distribute directly to retailers. The company has over 4,000 knife profiles to create mouldings for up to 9,000 SKU.

         CNC Machine for cutting shapes from panels













Our next stop was was Armstrong Products. The division in Beverly is the hardwood flooring for Armstrong. The products manufactured are pre-finished floors that are ready to shipment to retailers for ultimate consumption by consumers. The plant has the largest kiln operation east of the Mississippi River and operates 38 kilns for drying wood. The kilns are fueled by sawdust from the plant, but even with the kiln sawdust burning, Armstrong removes four full truck loads of sawdust each day from the facility. They focus on the traditional flooring lines the utilize oak, maple, and ash species. Unfortunately, photography and video was not allowed in the plant which is by far the largest wood manufacturer we visited while in Randolph County.

Think about the following:

• What are the benefits of focusing on only a few species of wood for Armstrong?
• Why would Colonial Millwork store so many knife profiles? How would this affect future mill work?

Hamer Fuel Pellet Visit

The first stop on Monday for the Forest and Rail was Hamer Fuel Pellet in Elkins. WV. Jim Dearing provided the group with a tour of the facility that manufactures fuel pellets for heating. Hamer uses sawdust, a waste product from milling lumber, to fully utilize the complete resource of the tree.

 The process starts with truck delivery of sawdust from a mill. The dust is sorted according tree species before being loaded into the dryer. The 110,000 pound drum is heated by a 55 million BTU furnace that maintains a drying temperature of 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. Each load of 30 tons dries to a weight of 15 tons before entering the extrusion process.

The dry sawdust has vegetable oil infused before entering the extrusion machine. The machine uses a system of rollers and a die to press the dust into cylinder shapes before being cut to roughly 1/2 inch lengths that are 1/4 inch diameter. The pellets are used in a pellet stove to provide efficient heating with minimal waste and ash.

Questions to think about:

• Research trobology. How does pellet fuel meet the concept?
• What are some benefits of using pellet fuel? 
• Why would wood product manufacturers benefit from pellet fuel?

Presentation on Randolph County with Whetshell

Robert Whetshell spoke with the Forest and Rail Project on Monday evening on how Randolph County and Elkins have changed over time due to the influence of railroads, timber, manufacturing, and other economic factors.

When most people think of the mountainous regions in West Virginia, they think that the trees were mostly untouched until settlers arrived in the late 1700's. In reality, the Native Americans removed trees to before then to access larger flat regions. The settlers of Randolph County then continued the practice of girdling, used by Native Americans, to create mountain homesteads and cutting to build homes.

At one time, Randolph County was estimated to have close to 400,000 acres of virgin forest before the 1880's. When the harvesting of timber started in earnest, the axe and cross-cut saw where the modern tools for falling trees. When the tree was milled, the Pit or Whip Saw was an arduous process that required two men to complete the milling of lumber.

The 1880's brought water-powered mills that known as a Sash Sawmill that limited the use of man power, but the process was slow only able to cut 500 feet per day. Animals, horses or mules, were used to drag lumber out of the forest to mills or as the power for hauling along primitive rail systems. Other options were Splash Dams, Log Slides, Floating Log Drives, but the most influential was steam power. Not only for transport on railroads, but as a machine to mill lumber using circular saws and band saws. Randolph County had close to 30 band saws operating during the rush of timber operations from the 1880's to the 1920's.

Aerial cables were used to remove logs from the forest to ready for transport to mills. The geared locomotive was the answer due to the ability to navigate mountainous terrain. The Shay, Climax, and Heisler locomotives used gears for moving up slopes that would stop rod locomotives. West Virginia Central & Pittsburgh RR was started by H.G. Davis and S.B. Elkins, influential business and political figures from the era, utilized geared locomotives. The railroads helped establish rapid growth of boom towns along the rail lines. As the timber was harvested and the resource gone, the boom towns lost significant numbers in population and the economies of the towns stagnated and declined.

Some quick facts about West Virginia's Forest:

• 30 billion board feet were harvested between 1870 and 1920.
• 10 million acres of virgin forest were harvested
• Only 140 acres were spared as a result of survey error
• Hemlock trees will be lost due to the wooly adelgid infestation
• Erosion occurs quickly after deforestation
• Siltation from erosion in streams causes flooding issues

Think about the following:

• How have things changed in timber operations? Do different regulations apply today? 
• Why is protecting watersheds from excess runoff important? What evidence do we see to protect water ways?
• How were the National Forests established in West Virginia? 
• How did the Civilian Conservation Corp contribute to forestry? 
• What can be done to maintain and improve the forests?

Whetshell, Robert. (2012) Forestry in Randolph County. Elkins, WV. July 16, 2012

Shay Image from http://i.images.cdn.fotopedia.com/flickr-3641669696-hd/US_National_Parks/California/Yosemite_National_Park/Yosemite_Mountain_Sugar_Pine_Railroad/Locomotive_10_at_Sugar_Pine_Railroad_-_Yosemite_California.jpg used under Creative Commons.