Ivan L. Collins created historically accurate models of horse-drawn vehicles using painstaking research to ensure that every detail was authentic. Built at one-eighth scale, these models represent transportation technology before the automobile. Collins saw this work as more than a hobby; his models were a way to preserve history for future generations.

See and read more:

https://www.ohs.org/museum/exhibits/models-in-motion-ivan-collins-miniature-vehicles.cfm
http://www.scalemodelhorsedrawnvehicle.co.uk/(Ivan%20Collins).htm

Thanks to David Barnes.

Image: Oregon Historical Society.

Belgian art collective Time Circus built their first prototype of a giant Land Ship that will travel through Europe. Like a modern-day galley, the land ship will be propelled by the muscle power of the participating travelers. The journey is understood as a 21st century pilgrimage and will take an estimated 10 years.

The Journey

Along the journey, people can board the land ship and travel along for as long as they want to. Longer stops will be made in Marseille (France), Novisad (Serbia), Timisoara (Romania) and Elefsina (Greece).

In 2018, land ship terminals will be built in these cities. Like bus stops, these will show how long it takes before the vehicle arrives. The start of the journey is planned for 2020.

The Ship

When we talked to one of the makers earlier this month in Antwerp, he said it was not yet clear whether the final vehicle would be a single monstrous land ship of 50 metres long, or a caravan of ‘small’ ones the size of the first prototype, which is 13 metres long.

He said they were also contemplating the use of draft animals or sails — reminiscent of the ancient Chinese wheelbarrow. The vehicle or vehicles will be equipped with sleeping accommodation for at least 50 people.

Confronting Bureaucracy

Either way, the trip will be challenging, not only because of the physical effort involved, but also because of many other obstacles, from bridges over telephone lines to rules and regulations. Time Circus wants to “obtain freedom of movement by gently opposing regulations with inventiveness and the use of the grey areas of the law, confronting the bureaucracy in a playful and witty way.”

The slowness of the journey gives ample space for meetings and interaction along the road. The main message of the project is to demonstrate that “unexpected forces can develop through cooperation”. It also wants to “encourage the imaginative forces in the world, introducing alternatives that lie dormant”.

More info: Time Circus. There’s also a video (in Dutch).

Despite what you heard, the Amish aren’t against technology. Communities adopt new gadgets such as fax machines and business-use cell phones all the time—so long as the local church approves each one ahead of time, determining that it won’t drastically change their way of life.

So it is with the Amish horse-drawn buggy. You might have thought the technology inside this 1800s method of transportation stopped progressing right around then. Instead, buggy tech keeps advancing, and buggy makers have become electricians and metalworkers to build in all the new tech you can’t see under the traditional black paint.

Read more at Popular Mechanics. Via Amish America.

Livestock at waste management park in Bobbili, India

Lowly as it may seem, Bobbili prides itself on its zero-waste zone with a comprehensive recycling system that ensures nothing goes to the landfill. Their unique solution involves door-to-door collection of household waste strictly separated as dry and wet, and the 2010 ban on plastic. The spotlight of the scheme is the Municipal Solid Waste Park – a 8.5-acre site comprising a bio-compost yard handling 2.5 to 3 tonnes of organic waste a day. The most innovative part is the utilisation of livestock.

A 2012 report by India’s Regional Centre for Urban and Environmental Studies states that “animals are the part of the solution, not the problem. The livestock’s potential contribution in solving environmental problems is equally large. The livestock contribute to tackle our environmental degradation by a variety of ways.”

By 2012 the park kept 4 chickens, 21 ducks, 6 pigs and other animals for different functions. Chickens are benefited from the insects in the waste, whilst pigs would gulp the food waste collected from hotels. Ducks take care of the leftovers collected from the fish market. Dogs are in charge of domestic leftovers. The ‘park farm’ is probably the first in the world to implement animal feed on a municipal level.

Solid Waste Management Park in Bobbili, India

The animal farm takes its inspiration from the history of feeding animals with organic waste. Dogs, especially domesticated ones, are effective in taking care of meat scraps. As a common practice in traditional pig farming, pigs often consume the leftovers, rather than energy and cost-intensive crops. Ducks and chickens respectively favour kitchen scraps and milling by-products. Given the extraordinary effectiveness of earthworms to decompose vegetable and food wastes, vermicompost is another key of this living waste management system.

Besides the fact that landfill relief means avoided methane emission, animal waste can be a sustainable source of natural fertiliser whose cost and carbon footprint are way lower than artificial ones. More importantly, because the system doesn’t involve complex technologies, it can be easilly implemented – though in a smaller scale – on household levels. Just by keeping dogs and resuming the tradition of backyard chicken, we can easily reduce kitchen scraps and contribute to a significant cut in food waste.

This is a guest post by Ren Wan, a writer and sustainability advocate who is based in Hong Kong. She runs JupYeah, an online swapping platform, is a managing editor for WestEast Magazine, and blogs at Loccomama. Ren previously wrote about Furoshiki, a square cloth that with different wrapping techniques can basically transport anything.

As many as forty bullocks, or thirty horses, pulled the vehicles over distances of up to 1600 km.

Table Top Wool Wagons (also known as “jinkers” or “ships of the desert”) appeared at the end of the nineteenth century and remained in use until the 1920s, when they were replaced by trucks.

The Vehicle

The Table Top Wool Wagon evolved from a somewhat smaller vehicle that appeared in the 1870s and carried a load of between 5 and 6 tonnes of both wool and wheat. The larger versions, especially designed for wool, appeared in the 1890s when road conditions improved. They reached their zenith in the 1910s. Below is a picture of a medium sized wagon (5 m long, 2 m wide) with a removable hay frame.

The Table Top Wool Wagon was up to 8.5 m long and 2.5 m wide, and its wheels were up to 2.5 m in diameter and 20 cm wide. The wagon had no sides, hence its name, but the platform curved upwards by 5 cm at the front and rear. This caused the bales of wool to lean towards the middle and steady the load. The vehicles had a loading capacity of 10 to 15 tonnes, with record loads of over 17 tonnes.

The Engine

Such heavy loads required large teams of draught animals, especially on muddy roads. Four horses were needed just to move the vehicle around when it was empty. When fully loaded, up to forty bullocks or thirty horses could be yoked to the front, and donkeys and camels were also used. Drivers did not sit on their wagon loads, but led the way on horseback or by walking, and the vehicle was steered by the lead-horses.

Road and weather conditions usually determined whether horse teams or bullock teams were used. When roads were either very rough, or did not exist at all, bullocks were of much greater use than horses.

The driver was often accompanied by his wife and family who rode in a horse-drawn wagonette that the women drove. A cattle dog completed the gang.

The Routes

Many wagons were driven from Ilfacombre to Rockhampton, a journey of almost 800 km. The trip took three months — longer when it rained, and only half as long to return with empty carts. Ilfacombre had the largest wool scouring plant in Queensland, with most of the wool from that area being washed there.

Washed wool was a lot lighter, so you could put a lot more washed and dried wool into a bale and ship it more cheaply. Other destinations of the Table Top Wool Wagons were Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth, with travel distances of up to 1600 km.

The Challenges

There are records of wagons taking two years to complete a journey to the coastal markets. All too often, a wagon would tip over, particularly after rain. The only remedy was to unload, upright the wagon, and wait for the road to dry.

Hills presented another challenge. The most common form of slowing the descent involved chaining a felled log
to the back of the wagon. To cope with steep hills, some wagons had their wheels ‘spragged’ — that is, they thrust a sapling between the spokes of each pair of wheels so that it jammed against the wagon floor.

Table Top Wool Wagons disappeared in the 1920s, when they were replaced by trucks and the gradually extending railways.

Kris De Decker. Edited by Deva Lee.

Sources and more information: 

• “Progression of a table top wool waggon“, Scale model horse drawn vehicle forum.
• “Technology in Australia 1788 – 1988“, Compiled by Fellows of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, 1988
• “Wheat wagon at Narromine railway station, NSW“, the Powerhouse Museum.
• “Wool wagons bogged on the Mossgiel-Ivanhoe road“, NSW
• “The Boer in war and peace“, Arthur M. Mann, 1900
• “The teams of the Blacksoil Plains”, Douglas Harris, 1977
• “Wool, wagons and clipper ships: transport, trade and travel in Australia 1830s to 1880s“, Allen & Unwin, 2008
• “The horse and buggy days“, H. McGregor, 1981
• “Outback in Australia”, W.K. Harris, 1913
• “Early Road Transport“, Kenton T. Cameron, 1953
• “Bennet’s patent table-top wool waggon“, The Sydney Mail, April 25, 1906
• “Romance of Australia’s 1926-27 wool clip“, The Mail, 14 august 1926
• “Wool drays and the curious case of the missing bodies“, the Powerhouse Museum. (A bizarre example of early Photoshopping).
• “Progression of a model“, Scale model horse drawn vehicle forum

Dog owners looking for a more sustainable means of personal transportation should not look any further: the dog sulky is the answer. Dog powered vehicles have been used for the transport of goods and passengers in some European countries during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Compared to those vehicles, the modern dogcarts offered by ChaloSulky promise to deliver a much smoother ride. The carts benefit greatly from the use of bicycle wheels, suspension and brakes. Moreover, the dogs are not confined between two shafts. Instead, only one shaft goes over the animals’ back, making the vehicle lighter and giving the dogs more freedom of movement.

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The picture above shows the “Suspension Sulky”. From the website:

The sulky’s seat is behind the axle. When you sit on the seat, your weight lifts the shaft up. The shaft has upward lift on the harness. Think see-saw. Think lever and fulcrum. When the dog is pulling, your weight actually makes him lighter on his feet. Adjust the seat location relative to the axles/fulcrum by loosening the handle of the seat slider. A light weight rider sits further aft than a heavy rider. Mountain bike suspension forks allow the suspension sulky to ride smoothly on rough ground. Each wheel flexes over rough places independently from the other.

Picture above: The Simple Sulky. (ChaloSulky)

Picture above: the Bicycle Sulky. (ChaloSulky)

Above: the dog cart. The traditional type, improved by the use of bicycle wheels, is still available. (ChaloSulky)

Above: Belgian dogcart, Brussels, late 1800s. (From: dog drawn carts in the 19th and early 20th centuries)

Thanks to MP Hartog.

Related articles:

• How to downsize a transport network: the Chinese wheelbarrow
• Pack goats
• Camel trains
• The best invention since the wheel
• Pedal powered flatbed truck
• Vintage Dutch carrier bikes
• Low-tech indoor truck
• Overview of early electric trucks
• Guido Vigevano’s wind car
• Ostrich car
• Aerial ropeways
• Trolleybuses and trolleytrucks

“The camel as a pack animal was favored over wheeled transportation for reasons that become obvious when the camel is compared with the typical ox-drawn vehicle. The camel can carry more, move faster, and travel farther, on less food and water, than an ox. Pack animals need neither roads nor bridges, they can traverse rough ground and ford rivers and streams, and their full strength is devoted to carrying a load and not wasted on dragging a wagon’s deadweight. Once the camel and ox are compared, one wonders why the wheel was ever adopted in that region in the first place.”

“A large share of the burden of goods in the Near East was always carried by pack animals. A bias for the wheel led Western scholars to underrate the utility of pack animals and overemphasize the contribution made by wheeled vehicles in the years before the camel replaced the wheel. The more we learn about the wheel, the clearer it becomes that its history and influence have been distorted by the extraordinary attention paid to it in Europe and the United States. The Western judgment that the wheel is a universal need (as crucial to life as fire) is of recent origin.”

Quoted from: “The Evolution of Technology“, George Basalla, 1988. See also: “The Camel and the Wheel“, Richard W. Bulliet, 1990 (summary). Previously: Camel trains in Asia, Russia and Australia.

“Goats can be excellent pack animals. A good pack goat will carry at least twenty-five percent of his body weight (a two-hundred-pound wether will pack about fifty pounds), will follow you like a dog, will feed himself along the trail and around camp, and will be a pleasure to have around. Goats have been used as a beast of burden in Europe and Asia for thousands of years.”

Read more:  1 (quote) / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5.

Picture found at American Goat.

Related: Pack camels / Pack horses.

Camelphotos.com has an interesting collection of historic camel pictures, showing pack trains, camels pulling wagons, and some camels working in agriculture and industry. Also of interest is a picture gallery of camels in India today.

More at Camelphotos.com.

Portraits of farm animals by Rob MacInnis. Via The Brook (“We are an international animal welfare organisation dedicated to improving the lives of working horses, donkeys and mules in some of the world’s poorest communities”).

“An improvement made by Mr. P. K. Dederick, of Albany, N.Y., was a horse-hoisting machine that very materially reduced the labor of the horse in hoisting. Previous to this, the horse walked forward to hoist a full bucket, and was obliged to back to lower the empty bucket into the hold of the vessel. With most horses, this latter was harder work than hoisting the loaded bucket, while the Dederick machine increased the speed of unloading but little, it reduced the labor of the horse about one-half.”

Quoted from: “Coal handling machinery“, C.W.Hunt Company, 1893.

Read at Seed Magazine (+ links & video + 90 page handbook – pdf)

“A report to the Surgeon General on the transport of sick and wounded by pack animals” (1877).

“The horse-powered ferryboat, though patented in 1819, can trace its origin of design back to the time of the Romans. The Roman ox boat was an early war vessel propelled by a team of oxen. During the 1700’s, boats propelled by horses could be found on various rivers and canals of Europe. By the early 1800’s, horse powered boats could be found on Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. By the 1820’s, this mode of transportation had spread to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the Great Lakes, and to several other rivers and lakes in the Northeast. This type of vessel was generally utilized for journeys of only a few miles.”

Found at Shipwreckworld. Previously: Trolleyboats.

Picture taken from: c’était au temps où bruxelles brusselait. More low-tech cars.