In the old days

Timber tramways would transport freshly cut logs to sawmills deep in the forest.

Museums Victoria image MM 5821

With the sawn timber then being loaded onto main line trains for transport to the construction industry.

Photo by Weston Langford

But by World War II the timber tramways were gone: replaced by road transport, and supplying a network of town based sawmills established following the 1939 Black Friday bushfires.

Enter woodchips

In the 1960s the timber industry switched from sawlogs to clearfell logging for export woodchips.

Initially this traffic was by road, but in 1999 newly privatised freight operator Freight Australia started to move this traffic to rail.

Logs were loaded onto flat wagons at Bairnsdale and Wodonga.

Hauled by train to Geelong.

Where they were unloaded at the Midway woodchip plant and sent through the chipper.

To be loaded by conveyor into ships.

Bound for Japanese paper mills.

These log trains continued running until 2009, when the Black Saturday bushfires burnt out the source of the logs.

And now containers

In the 2000s another way of moving timber by rail emerged – sawlogs stuffed inside standard ISO containers, ready to be exported by sea.

Logs are delivered to the rail terminal by truck and then stockpiled.

The loader grabs a claw full of logs, and loads them into a cradle.

Once the cradle is full, it is placed in front of an empty 40 foot container.

A specially fitted loader then pushes the logs into the container.

Them the forklift takes the empty log cradle away for reloading.

And so the process repeats.

Current containerised log rail services include:

• Bathurst to Port Botany, NSW: 175,000 tonnes/year by Pacific National
• Goulburn to Port Botany, NSW: 100,000 tonnes/year by Crawford Freightlines
• Werris Creek to Port Botany, NSW: 230,000 tonnes/year by Crawford Freightlines
• Bordertown and Flinders Adelaide Container Terminal, SA: Bowmans Rail

Footnote: log wagons

Moving logs by container on standard flat wagons is a lot more flexible than constructing dedicated log wagons, which Freight Australia discovered when trying to expand their fleet.

Freight Australia found a new emerging market in transporting plantation logs and to capitalise, the Sale to Bairnsdale line had to be reopened. For the log business to expand, wagons that could carry logs were in urgent demand.

In order to satisfy this demand, older disused container flats, open wagons and louvre vans were all identified as having the potential to be converted into log wagons by having their sides and canopies removed. Further checks were undertaken to determine the suitability of each wagon to support the load where the stanchion cradles were to be attached.

The container flats and the open wagons proved straight forward, however, the VLEX louvre van design had to be analysed as its canopy needed to be fully removed. The analysis revealed, as with many of the original PTC wagons, that the center sill on the vans actually took 95+ % of the load.

The cradle frames for the logs were then designed so that they could be huck bolted onto the various wagon classes, this allowed for easy replacement if damaged and the ability to convert these wagons back to container flats if the need arose.

Flexibility and the ability to convert wagons readily for any commodity was a bonus for these wagons however, unlike previous log wagons built, these wagons were not fitted with bulkheads. To fit bulkheads to these wagons would mean excessive extra costs, shorten their effective carrying load length and reduce their flexibility. To enable these wagons to be accredited for operation in Victoria, Freight Australia had to demonstrate the safe securing of the logs namely in the longitudinal direction without bulkheads being fitted.

The ROA Manual of Engineering Standards and Practices requires an overall load sustaining minimum capacity in the longitudinal direction equal to the gravity force of the load multiplied by 4. i.e. survive a 4G de-acceleration. Freight Australia demonstrated the safety of these wagons, loaded with logs and why bulkheads were not required by: –

• Carrying out impact trials of Log wagons to determine the load movements at speeds between 8kph to 15kph. These dramatic test could not replicate 4G as to do so would have meant destroying a wagon however, it did demonstrate the controlled way the load shifted. The mass of the logs tied down and jammed between the stanchions and the friction between the logs meant the log movements were contained within the outline diagram and none of the logs broke away from their total mass;

• Modelling the forces and the loads required to move the loaded logs between the stanchions and calculating the sufficiency of the log restraining systems;

• Reviewing other Log Transporters and their practices. This included the American Railroads, who are governed by the AAR guidelines, and more importantly our competitors in the road industry who follow the Department of Transport Guidelines. Both operations aren’t required to operate their vehicles with bulkheads.

Further reading

• Shipping and handling costs for Australia’s wood product exports

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