Vintage steam engines and bush machines showcased at Putāruru Timber Museum

A Crabtree steam engine from Maroa mill. Photo / Catherine Fry

New Zealand Timber Museum Trust chairman Dennis Nielson is determined to make the Putāruru-based museum one of the five major tourist attractions in the North Island.

The six-hectare site includes a café and buildings steeped in heritage and stories, which house an extensive collection of vintage machinery and stories from rural New Zealand."

Coast & Country News’ Catherine Fry has selected a few favourites from the museum to showcase.

Crabtree steam engine

Built by Wellington’s W Crabtree and Sons, this steam engine, the last one intact of only three, was once the driving force behind the entire timber mill at Maroa, south of Tokoroa.

Using a series of belts, pulleys and gears, it drove every other moving part of the mill in the early to mid-20th century.

Judd haulers dragged heavy logs out of the forest. Photo / Catherine Fry

Judd hauler

These powerful steam engines were right in the thick of the action, dragging heavy logs out of the rough forest terrain.

Invented by Charles Judd Limited in Thames, they were used from the early 20th century and were a significant piece of logging technology in NZ’s history.

The museum has photos of them being used in the Mōkai bush, circa 1904.

A Western Wheeled scraper - an early version of a grader. Photo / Catherine Fry

Western Wheeled scraper

This particular scraper was made by the Western Wheeled Scraper Co. in Iowa, United States, in 1877.

It was considered to be an improvement on the crude scrapers used for the railroads in the US.

When it reached NZ shores, it was used on the roads and firebreaks around the Tokoroa and Mōkai sawmills in the 1920s.

Kiwi ingenuity - a car engine powering the train. Photo / Catherine Fry

Kiwi ingenuity

It wasn’t just expensive, purpose-built machinery that was used.

In true Kiwi style, those out in the bush ingeniously improvised using whatever they could find.

Most of the machines at the museum were built by bush engineer Olly Smith (1907-1993).

Often, steam engines were refitted to run on the narrow bush tramways that which the timber was hauled along.

Farm machinery was repurposed, and it wasn’t unusual to see an old tractor with railway wheels running along the bush tracks in the early 1900s.

Watson Grayburn’s 1:87 scale model of a native sawmill from the 1930s to 1950s. Photo / Catherine Fry

Miniature sawmill

In Trainworld, New Zealand’s largest model railway system, the history of our forestry industry has been brought to life in miniature.

Volunteer Watson Grayburn has built an incredibly detailed 1:87 scale model of a native timber sawmill based on imagery of various sawmills from the 1930s to 1950s.

Watson authentically crafted and painted his models, even using native timber where it would have been used.

Putāruru-based