SW Washington loggers from the 70's/early 80's............Filla,Portway,ect....

Vigilant said:

I still recall the radio repeater codes for Vail and Pe Ell. Vail was KOA424, PE Ell was KOB393.

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Looks like Weyco is still FCC licensed with those two at KO Peak and BawFaw Peak. But I disgress, cool history!

Yeah, for now, until the MBAs at Weinerhoser find a way to screw it up.

Engine 684 in her golden years at the Fife museum:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=329588&nseq=1

Mr. Filla's obituary:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...=610&gbv=2&tbm=isch&ei=qBryTe60FsnZgAf2qpSzDQ

I still recall his trucks, with his name in cursive writing on the door.

It '77 or '78 my dad got a whole new side when he worked for Roy. New tyee,link belt shovel,tail cat and even landing push cat. Roy gave him a blank check to go get a crewbus and it had to be a chevy according to Mr. Filla. Dad and I went to Gootee Chevrolet in chehalis and bought a new full load black crewcab 4x4. The only thing Roy complained about was that the bus was black and not "Filla issue" colors......lol

He was a hell of a man for sure.

Vigilant said:

Mr. Filla's obituary:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...=610&gbv=2&tbm=isch&ei=qBryTe60FsnZgAf2qpSzDQ

I still recall his trucks, with his name in cursive writing on the door.

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Hallback said:

It '77 or '78 my dad got a whole new side when he worked for Roy. New tyee,link belt shovel,tail cat and even landing push cat. Roy gave him a blank check to go get a crewbus and it had to be a chevy according to Mr. Filla. Dad and I went to Gootee Chevrolet in chehalis and bought a new full load black crewcab 4x4. The only thing Roy complained about was that the bus was black and not "Filla issue" colors......lol

He was a hell of a man for sure.

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Sounds like Mr. Filla broke the mold in that regard. Most of the Gyppo sides I recall ran older equipment. I get the feeling that Mr. Filla knew the importance of motivation and morale. Too bad he was not able to refine his taste in pickups and go the Ford route.

Hey Hallback: Remember that GREAT big pair of blue jeans hanging on the wall in the work clothes department at Yard Birds?

Remember the radio station KIXI, 96 FM? When everyone else my age was listening to rock & roll, I was listening to KIXI, because that was what my dad and I listened to in his company pickup.

I loved it at Vail, with all my heart. I spent every day I possibly could there with my dad. And now, when he is old and frail and living in a rest home, I do my best to pick him up every Saturday, and take him riding in my pickup. To this day, my dad is still my hero, and he knows it.

There is something else you might have seen ay Vail, Hallback. Do you recall seeing a large mount Stihl rollernose bar about 8 feet long, that was welded together in pieces? When they cut that 14 foot diameter Sitka Spruce in about 1971, they had to cut the back off of one 16" rollernose bar and the tip off another, and weld both long sections together to come up with a bar long enough to fall the tree. They dropped the tree with an 090G, and loaded it with the tower onto off-highway trucks.

I do remember that bar well. I was trying to get it when the sawshop closed but it was gone already. I remember the overalls well at Yardbirds also..."If you can fit 'em you can have 'em"......

I wish I could turn back the clock to the early/mid 70's and be a cutter/logger then but it wasn't meant to be for me and I will have to continue to do it now and enjoy the memories.

I have an 075 I am restoring right now that will hang above my fireplace. It is with that saw that I fell my first trees when I was 9-10 and hooked for life.

I too wish I could have turned back the clock and logged in the PNW in the Sixties and Seventies, but I came close enough. I still got to see it as a young whippersnapper. I believe the saw shop you recall was on the side of the gravel toward the Vail Cutoff. That was my dad's Superintendent's Shack when we were there. Back then, Gene Sherwood had his saw shop out in the middle of the lot, out in front of my dad's office. They also had a fuel island out there.

I bought my first saw at age 12, from Ford Bentley, the Cutting Crew Supervisor. It was a Homelite 5-30N in mint condition, with two 34" bars that came with it. I bought an 041 from Weyco about a year later. The 050s/051s were just hitting the market when we came to Vail, and they made quite a splash. Nobody wanted to touch those heavy, slow 090Gs, and they ended up selling off a bunch of them, for $25.00 each.

I used to just about drool when I was in that saw shop. I liked the 051s, but my all-time favorite saw back then was the Homelite 850 and 870, which were basically the same saw.

And in the morning, when we left the shop and headed for the woods, on a clear day, you could see Mount Rainier out ahead in all its splendor.

So now you know where that long bar came from. Small world, eh?

Very small world yet very damn good. I loved the days going out with my grandpa when they were falling old growth in the 70's and 80's. I will never forget those days.

Just a litle more trivia:

When we were there, thye still used a couple of antique, hand-crank telephones for an intercom system between the Superintendent's Shack and the Shop. I believe it was when they built the new office building out front that they took that old system out. This was some time after we moved down South. Mr. Ken Schaeffer got the phone out of the Super's office because he was one of the big chiefs, and my dad got the phone out of the shop office. When I moved my folks into a rest home a few years ago, my dad gave me that phone. It's one of my prized possessions. That, and the hard hat that I wore as a kid at Vail. Yep, I still have that too.

The last time I was out there, in 2002, of course I had to stop at Stewart's Meat Shop in McKenna. Ms. Dorothy was still alive then, at about age 90, and she still remembered my dad. Evelyn's Restaurant in Yelm was under a new name, but still there as well.

And now, after this epic hijack, we return you to our regularly scheduled discussion about Roy Filla.

No Hijack here Vigilant....This is all SW washington based logging and history and right here is where it belongs!!
Keep on sharing as I am learning/remembering alot and I thank you!!

I thank you as well, amigo. This has been great.

Vigilant said:

I thank you as well, amigo. This has been great.

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Yes it has....Oh, I also have my grandfathers hard hat from his tenure at vail. I have worn it when bidding jobs and always feel as if the knowledge comes from the hat.

I'm thinking the name of the mountain was Clam Mountain, but maybe I'm wrong.... anyway, they used to have a repeater tower pretty high up on a certain hill. That place was lousy with wild blueberries. There was actually a stench in the air of overripe berries in the summer heat. We didn't spend much time picking berries, because the bears were pretty territorial when it came to blueberry patches.

Did you know that you can go to Mapquest and see satellite photos of the whole camp? You can use Google Earth as well. Unfortunately, the old reload does not show up. It has finally grown back over. I have shared this story here before, but since you seem interested, I will pass it on again. The Vail reload was not set up like an A frame, as are most reloads I have seen. They stood two spars straight up and ran a 'crotch line' as my dad called it between them. Art Smythe, the veteran reload operator, kept a string of rail cars at the reload, and pulled the string forward one car length with a straw line every time he was ready for another empty car. Pretty much the same way as they did with the Lidgerwood tower skidders, except Smythe's donk did not straddle the tracks. He spend every day picking up one off-highway load after another, and transferring them onto rail cars. The donk was a 1925 Washington loading donkey. They used it in the woods for two years, and then set up the reload in 1927, the same year as they built that majestic old shop building that the bastards tore down in recent years. I loved that shop. The reload donk started out powered by wood-fired steam, then went to Diesel fired, and then at some point they began to power it with old truck engines. When we were there, it was running on an old natural Cummins, probably a 280. About once a month, Mr. Smythe would call Jay Lynch, the Shop foreman, on the radio and say basically the same thing: "We're gonna work on the reload this Saturday. I need a box of rags, a case of grease, and a bucket of spare nuts and bolts". Jay Lynch's answer was always the same; "Yes sir, Mr. Smythe".

Jay Lynch moved down to Plymouth, NC with Weyco shortly after we moved there in 1972. He didn't stay long. He resigned, and went to work for Cascade Loggers' Supply in Centralia.

I used to cut a lot of firewood out of chunks at the reload, and Mr. Smythe always had a few nice chunks stashed here and there. He was a grouchy old picklepuss by nature, but that man had a heart of gold, as did the vast majority of the fine loggers I knew back then. God bless you, Mr. Smythe.

Each morning, Ernie Kell, the lokie engineer, and his brakeman, the late and famous Jim Barrett, bald-faced a string of empty log cars out in front of the lokie before daylight, to spot them at the reload before they hooked to yesterday's production for their daily trip to either the port, or Mill B in Everett. Well, one morning, a certain new foreman whose name I shall not mention, although his nickname was Hippy Harry, was running late. He saw the lokie's headlight back down the tracks, dropped a gear in the pickup and nailed it, in an effort to beat the train across the tracks.... and it was too late when he discovered what the term 'bald-facing' meant. He totaled that brand new F-250, and he was not too popular around there for a while.

Dad bought Mr. Smythe a brand new stacker in about 1971, partly to give the old man a break and make him comfortable, since he refused to retire. Mr. Smythe would have no part of it. he wanted to be back on his reload, and he found one thing after another wrong with that stacker, so he could go back to that loud, rough, aggravating old machine. I have heard from reliable sources that Mr. Smythe was the first operator to run that reload in 1927, and stayed on it until they finally tore that contraption down. Can you imagine that kind of dedication, not to mention job security? Back then, Weyerhaeuser took care of their people, and their people showed them the same consideration. Such a shame to see them in their current shape. But life goes on. And on and on.....

And somehow on and on I go......

I keep on rollin' with the flow.

I remember riding from the beach to my Grandmas place outside of Kelso with dad in his crummy. He would either have the radio tuned to some talk radio show or a ball game. The traction tires howled very loud at 70 MPH. We often stopped in Chehalis at the A&W for a burger and root beer. Girls on roller skates brought the food out. Also stopped in Oakville/Rochester at the burger joints there. Plenty of deer hunting up the Coweeman.

Vigilant said:

I found a complete roster of all the Vail/Pe Ell lokies somewhere. I'll post the link here when time permits. There is a lot of footage on the Vail documentary of Jim Barrett on Engine 776, a GP38. My dad had 493 while we were there, but I heard the engineer on 684 over in Pe Ell on the radio quite often.

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Actually unit 776 was a EMD GP7. This loco was bought from Morrison Knudsen in 1977. Hence the reason the ### starts with 77. The 38s were 817, 818, 819, & 810. They were bought new in 1981 hence the reason the ### start with 81.

Best Regards
Ryan
modeling the Chehalis Western in N scale

Vigilant said:

Do you remember the reload at Vail, between the Mulqueen Junction and the shop? There is quite a story behind that.

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I know a story about Mulqueen gate. Those of you may remember that the Mulqueen gate crossed not only the road going to the reload but also the RR tracks too. Well one morning, one of my grandads (Elmer Cook) truck drivers was trying to be the first one to the reload. Well turns out he was a little too early as the Mulqueen gate was still closed. The driver didn't see it until it was too late. He opened the gate that morning with my grandads KW log truck and put it on its side. Needless to say my grandad was NOT happy. I am surprised that he didnt can the driver that day as he was a schmuck anyways.

cwwrman said:

I know a story about Mulqueen gate. Those of you may remember that the Mulqueen gate crossed not only the road going to the reload but also the RR tracks too. Well one morning, one of my grandads (Elmer Cook) truck drivers was trying to be the first one to the reload. Well turns out he was a little too early as the Mulqueen gate was still closed. The driver didn't see it until it was too late. He opened the gate that morning with my grandads KW log truck and put it on its side. Needless to say my grandad was NOT happy. I am surprised that he didnt can the driver that day as he was a schmuck anyways.

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We may be talking about two different places with the same name. The Mulqueen Junction is past the old reload, about a mile or two (IIRC) further into the claim, and away from the shop/old town. If you went straight, you were on the '10 road', headed for the DesChutes watershed, and also the Nisqually. Facing away from Vail, if you turned right at Mulqueen, you were headed up into the Skookumchuck watershed. Was this 'Mulqueen Gate' right at the reload, or are you talking about the MulQueen Junction I just described?

When did your Grandfather run trucks at Vail?

Nice to see this thread resurrected.

Just had a conversation with the last Mayor of Vail (my Dad). He does not recall your Grandfather. We were there from 1968 to 1972. I believe the gate you mentioned is the one that's just inside the tree farm from the paved road that runs between Ranier and Yelm. Last time I was there, back in 2002, that gate was still there, although probably in a different form than in the old days.