What is it?

Is it part of a cable car system?

Obsolete now. It would never be found in any urban setting.

My guess is it's used in transporting logs down mountains...

You are in the right business, but the photo in your post #3 is misleading. It was never used in the summer.

I see it has sled runners, so I guess it was used to lower logs down the snow covered mountainsides...

https://books.google.com/books?

"Called a Barienger brake after its inventor, also called a crazy wheel due to its complexity."

When horses were used to haul sleigh loads of logs out of the woods, the teamsters had to be brave men. On downhill runs the horses often had to be driven at full gallop to stay ahead of the load of logs behind them. A loaded sleigh could weigh 20 tons. Sand was used to slow the descent, but the risk of a runaway load was always there. Many horses and men were killed. An American invented the Barienger brake. It was chained to a substantial stump and the cable was attached to the loaded sleigh. The sleigh could then be eased down long, steep hills. A quote from the book ("The Lumberjacks" -Donald MacKay): "You could hang a whole load of logs, horses and all, right in the air with them once the horses got to know them. At first they were a little nervous taking the hill, but you could stop the sleigh any place." The loggers called it the "crazy wheel".

From the book: "Each of the big companies kept enough horses in the bush to mount an army of Cossacks. Even in 1950, when trucks and tracked vehicles were replacing horses in the east and horses were long gone from the west coast woods, there were 35,000 horses in the logging industry." Thirty-five thousand horses! And that is just in Canada.

Is it a Canadian Slidewinder?

These sleds were drawn behind luxury cruise liners to gather seafood during the voyage...nets were placed at various depths to collect certain types of fish for fresh seafood dining...

Looks like a Rube Goldberg version of a Capstan Drive.A bunch of turns of rope around a large stump or tree would work just as well.One man can control a lot of weight with a capstan drive,it can be used to lift or lower a load.No complicated pulley thread up,just rope turns around a tree.

Capstan drives used on ships to control very heavy loads:

What you write makes sense, but apparently there was more to this. There is not a detailed description of its operation in the book I have, and I have been unable to find anything online except this (which gives a clue that it was not just a capstan function): "Applying the brake slows the descent of the sleigh and in doing so returns the other end of the cable for the next sleigh."

Several turns of cable around a large stump would work, but if a downhill run required say, 1000 feet of cable, that cable would need to be hauled back up again to connect to the next waiting sleigh. That would take time and additional wind-up machinery. It seems this device included both braking and wind-up functionality.

If the cable was in a loop,it would always have cable for the next run downhill.

It would dig into the tree trunk and get stuck...

I am not thinking of 4 or 5 wraps,with that much weight,I am thinking of maybe 50 or more.Then the load would be spread across a lot of cable,and I am thinking of large trees,which were plentiful in those days.Sure,it would strip the bark,but I don't think it would embed itself into the tree and stall with 20 tons on it.

Maybe. But I wouldn't want to be the guy controlling the tension of the wrap by feeding a 1000 feet of cable through my gloved hands - then doing it again for the next load, then again, from dawn to dusk. Also, cable wraps around a stump would not duplicate the other functionality described in the patent document - that of having two sleighs, one connected to each end of the cable, such that the loaded one descending the hill would pull the unloaded one up the hill. In this case a cable wrapped stump would provide no adjustment of the braking force, whereas the 'crazy wheel' did.

It would be simple to install a hand brake on the last loop on the tree,or stump, and use a looped continuous cable,with a sleigh at each end.As one descends,the other rises.

No need to slide it through gloved hands,and the labor would not be any more than the crazy wheel.

And with modern technology applied,a speed governor could be fitted to regulate the speed to a desired set point using disk brake pads or magnetic braking. Even a simple mechanical centrifugal regulator could be employed.

I realize all of this is not now needed with the high tech methods used today.

However,the "Crazy Wheel" was a very good idea,but there is more than one way to skin a Rhino.

The stump can be as large and tall as required,based on the experience and common sense of the loggers,which is legendary.

However,common sense is usually so rare among the general populous that I wonder why they call it "common"?

As SE states, the cable would dig into the wood of the stump around which it is wrapped. Those loaded sleighs could weigh twenty tons. It wouldn't take many sleigh runs to tear the stump apart.

I found the patent document. Google Patents site. Title: "Sleigh-Brake". Inventor: James Barienger US Patent: US1085189A Granted 1914

I looked at it very quickly. It returns the second end of the cable to connect to the next waiting and loaded sleigh, or alternatively, it can be connected continuously to two sleighs - the first loaded sleigh descends the hill, and as it does, pulls the second unloaded sleigh back up the hill.

I thought you would like this device. I recall a thread you started in which you asked for examples of mechanisms that utilize gravity to do useful work. This is one such mechanism.

The back end of the brake is chained to a sturdy tree and the other end attaches to the log sleigh drawn by the horses, as shown here....The operator could apply the brake if the sled started to go too fast, averting a catastrophe....

https://anotherwalkinthepark.com/2015/11/17/log-jammin-adirondack-museum/

https://www.marmorahistory.ca/1873-lumber-barons

https://m.facebook.com/MarmoraHistoricalFoundation/photos/a.636151393077619/5355230087836369/?type=3&_se_imp=1l0zfWBzTIQVKFls5

Re: Your links to Marmora logging history: Marmora, Ontario is just a few miles up the road. This area, with its great white pines, was a major source of ship's masts for Great Britain in the 1800s. According to my book, in one year alone, 1811, 27000 masts were shipped from Canada to GB, along with enormous quantities of squared timber and lumber. Wood had replaced fur as Canada's major export. The forests were so vast, it was believed they were inexhaustible.

I like it.

I think the Barienger brake (aka: crazy wheel) is an impressive manual device. Think of a 20 ton cement truck without brakes rolling down a steep slope with only the 'crazy wheel' keeping it from careening down the hill, losing the load, destroying the truck, and killing the driver. Maybe it did look like a Rube Goldberg contraption, but men trusted their lives to it, and the U.S. and Canadian patent offices in granting their patents, deemed the device to be new, useful, and non-obvious to those skilled in the art to which it pertains.

It should say in the book!

The book says what it is and what it does. It provides no technical details as to how it does what it does. Many here like puzzles, so I started the thread with a puzzle question, "What is it?" I suppose I could have started the thread with, "This is a Barienger brake, also known as a 'crazy wheel'. It was used in the logging industry to safely get loaded sleighs down steep grades when horses were still used in the bush. Does anyone here know the technical details of its operation?" Is that a satisfactory amendment?

I think it works on the same very simple principle as a block and tackle,with the pulleys oriented horizontally.

If that were the case, it would not have qualified for patent protection. Block and tackle systems are well understood. An innovation, to be patentable, must be non-obvious to those skilled in the art to which it applies. There is no gear reduction. The purpose of the several horizontal wheels and the labyrinthine routing of the cable was to increase the area of the braking friction surface, spread out the braking force along a distance of cable, thereby enabling manual control of several tons of load.

Do you have a patent number on it?

The patent usually give a very thorough explanation of the working principle

The levers there control blocks of wood that would press against the wheels, sometimes to the point of smoking...like they had on wagons back in the day...

The principle of operation is the same as your cable-turns-around-a-stump suggestion as an alternative braking means for loaded logging sleighs. It wouldn't surprise me if inventor James Barienger started his thought process with that. He was granted another patent related to the pulp logging industry so we can assume he was familiar with the logging methods of the time. It is possible he saw loggers using the field-rigged method you describe and asked them about its advantages and shortcomings. The loggers, with their legendary common sense, which you acknowledge, would have told him.

Having defined the problem he then would have applied himself to designing a portable mechanism that would eliminate the defects of the cable-turns-around-a-stump method, but retain the desired functionality of one man manual braking control of a several ton load. In patent language, the cable-around-a-stump method would be referred to as the 'prior art'.

His device improved upon the prior art in several ways:

- Unlike the prior art, the operational characteristics of the Barienger brake would be known and consistent. This is important for a device on which men trusted their lives. The braking effect of cable turns around a stump varies. It is dependent upon: a) The number of cable turns around the stump; b) The diameter of the stump; c) The wood species of the stump (hardwood or softwood, resinous or non-resinous; d) The moisture content of the stump; e) The diameter and flexibility of the cable.

- Unlike the prior art in which the cable itself rubs against the brake pad/block (the stump body), in the Barienger brake the cable runs smoothly in grooved wheels. The brake pads/blocks engage a surface of each wheel, not the cable itself, thereby avoiding cable deformation, excessive strand movement and attendant wear.

- The Barienger brake could be connected, without modification, to two sleighs such that as the loaded sleigh descends the hill, the unloaded sleigh is being pulled back up the hill, and do this with the same braking control as with just one sleigh. In the prior art cable-wrapped-around-a-stump method, if each cable end were attached to a sleigh, it would require some additional type of jerry-rigged field modification to ensure any type of braking control.

- When the Barienger brake was introduced, both timber and pulpwood logging were taking place in N. America. Stands of smaller trees were logged for pulpwood, but the logging sleighs were just as heavily loaded as in timber logging operations. In these stands if there was not a sufficiently substantial stump to provide a single anchoring point for the Barienger brake it could readily be anchored to several stumps for security. This could not be done with the prior art cable-turns-around-a-stump method. If, for example, cable turns were taken around one stump and then around another, one stump would still be taking the load of the sleigh.

PS: Also, starting the thread with the question,"What is it?" (when I knew what it is) gave an opportunity for the humorists here to entertain us with their authoritative-sounding, but absurd explanations of what it is and what it does. There was some mild humour here by one poster. What-is-it threads in the past have elicited some welcome and inspired nonsense.

I have to say that this thread is more interesting than I thought it would be.

When I saw the photo, I thought it was a device to straighten cables that are kinked or twisted, or to pre-tension them before putting them on a spool.

A multi pulley block and tackle would accomplish the same,without the need for a brake,simply one man at the operator end,which could be extended to the rider on the sled so he could control the speed,and the hook on a stump at one end,and the load at the other hook.

It could also be used to pull the load backwards if necessary, in case of a hang-up on an unforeseen obstacle.

Threading of the pulleys would be simple.

https://www.amazon.com/Block-Tackle-Pulley-System-Automotive/dp/B0BMVHXGMQ/ref=asc_df_B0BMVHXGMQ?tag=bngsmtphsnus-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80608076993778&hvnetw=s&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4584207597450407&psc=1

Look at this one,with ratios illustrated: