noise."Worldbuilding X: Harnesses, pt. 2 · 10:43pm May 27th, 2018
In our previous blog, we talked about the harness. The next part is the wagon, right?
Actually, no. Before we get to the wagon, we've got several other important pieces of the hitch to cover.
What we see in the show is that the wagons have rigid shafts attached to them, which are then fixed to the belly-clamp harnesses. Just like those harnesses wouldn't actually work on a real horse, just rigid shafts on a wagon wouldn't work, either.
For all but equipment that's attached with a flexible line of some sort (a plow, a stone boat, a sledge, someone on skis), you've got to have something that takes the movement of the horse's hips out. Not only does that make the ride more comfortable for you, but it also almost certainly makes it easier on the horse.
I want y'all to do an experiment for me, right now. Get up from your chair, put your hands on your hips, and then walk across your room.
Okay, did you feel how your hips were surging forward as your legs moved? It wasn't an even forward motion. Odds are that it was rocking your shoulders, as well (go on and try again, if you want). You can try to hold your hips more steady, but no matter what, you're not going to be able to move your legs forward without there being some surgey movement in your hips.
This same thing obviously happens with horses. The singletree has two rings on the forward side, and one on the backwards side. The single ring attaches to the cart side of the arrangement, and the two rings attach to straps that come off the collar, and the principle reason for it is to get rid of that movement.
Since we're talking about singletrees already, I might as well include doubletrees and eveners. While in the show we generally see only one pony pulling a wagon, obviously IRL if one pony can't get the job done, you just add more. While there are practical limits to doing this for humans and actual horses (the reins being one of the biggest problems), ponies could presumably keep hitching on until they reached the limits of material strength of whatever's attaching them all to the load.
Anyway, back on topic. Some wagons that are built to be towed by two horses will have a rigid pole in the center, and then two singletrees attached to the front bolster or the frame of the wagon (depending on circumstances). Other times, a two-pony team will be hitched to a pair of singletrees, which in turn will be hitched to a doubletree, and then that will be attached to the load.
Basically, a doubletree is a singletree, but wider.
If we go to three ponies hooked abreast, things start to get interesting. As far as I know, there's no such thing as a tripletree, but some wagons had a wide T at the end of the tongue that three singletrees could be hooked to in line. They also had an offset tongue that went between a pair of horses, and it was those two who steered (more on steering will be covered in the next blog).
What was normally done, I assume to keep the specialty equipment down, was you'd hitch a pair of horses to a doubletree the normal way, and then the third horse would be attached to a singletree. That doubletree and singletree would be hooked to an evener (further discussed below), which in turn would be hitched to the load.
Four abreast would take two doubletrees hitched to a third doubletree. Beyond that, I don't think you'd really want to go any wider.
I also will note here that singletrees, doubletrees, and eveners are also collectively called 'whippletrees,' 'whiffletrees,' and 'swingletrees,' and there's every possibility that they have other names, as well.
Some of the limitations of how horses are harnessed IRL is in the reins. Obviously, ponies don't have that limitation. Even when they're working as a team, they can just talk to each other, plus any farm mare with experience knows what to do when she's hitched up with other ponies.
But there is a drawback to doing this. Even though Ponyville doesn't seem to have roads like we think of them, there's certainly an understanding among the ponies about how far apart houses should be. How wide gates and bridges ought to be. So while you could theoretically make a plow that's twenty ponies wide—and takes twenty ponies to pull—there's no point. It would make short work of one field, and that's good, because you'd never be able to turn it or get it to another field. All you could do is make one pass with it, then unhitch and that would be it.
I initially thought that an evener equalizes the load when you have ponies of different strength pulling, but that's not actually what it was used for. The best I can tell, it was to get the pulling force centered on the wagon, which of course would be impossible to do without it if you had two horses hooked on one side of a doubletree and one horse hooked on the other side to a singletree.
That's really too bad, because I had a nice bit of headcanon I was thinking of involving that, until research proved that I was wrong. Ah well.
Just the same, I did come up with something else useful. While several of the photos I've shown have all-steel singletrees, doubletrees, etc., back in Ye Olden Times they were wooden. The eyebolt facing the load—the one that's on the rearward side—was metal. The other ends, where the chains from the horse hooked to the tree, were usually metal caps, which had the eye cast in place. The purpose of the metal cap was to keep the wood from splitting.
Those caps were available individually (well, I assume that they sold them in pairs), with the idea being that the farmer could make his own singletrees and doubletrees and just plunk on some caps that he purchased out of a catalog. Much cheaper than buying the whole thing.
We've talked a little bit here about going one, two, or three abreast. Now we're going to talk about other arrangements.
Not surprisingly, most of them had names.
A pair of ponies pulling side-by-side is a team If there's more than two, as far as I know, it's X abreast. Three is the most common; I have seen one video with four abreast (in that case, they were pulling a milk truck out of the snow).
While two ponies pulling side-by-side would be the most common arrangement, there's also what's called the tandem hitch, and that's two ponies in a row.
With three, there's of course three abreast, but there's also an arrangement called the unicorn hitch, and it looks like this:
Two ponies pull as a team (i.e., side-by-side), and the third is centered. In many cases, she would be attached with a singletree to the tip of the tongue of the wagon.
One that we often see IRL is the four-up, which is two teams in tandem, or if you prefer, four ponies in a rectangle.
Six-up is also somewhat common, with six ponies arranged two wide and three teams deep.
Generally, teams don't get larger than that. One exception I know of is the borax-hauling mules. The ad for Boraxo said 'twenty mule team,' because they were hitched up in a twenty mule train, and they pulled three wagons.
Other formations included the troika (another name for three abreast), the pickaxe (sort of the opposite of the unicorn; there were two horses in back and three in front), and there are probably more that I'm not aware of.
When you have a six-up formation, the foremost team is called the lead team. The middle team is the swing team, and the ones closest to the wagon is the wheel team.
The most important team is the wheel team. They're the ones responsible for both steering and braking, because they're the ones that typically control the shaft of the wagon. As such, the braking force is (generally) limited by how much they can stop; that's what sets the maximum load. In the case of the ponies, therefore, you'd want the biggest ones closest to the wagon. Assuming that you've got a mixed gender set of ponies, you're probably going to have your stallions right up at the wagon and mares in front of that.
Earlier, I mentioned that each pair of horses is called a team. While this might not be how the name came about, each team generally worked together, and you just added more of them as you needed them. In a perfect world, you'd pair up the closest matches, and you'd keep them together like that as long as they were working.
Ponies probably would want to do this, too.
Most of us who work physical jobs, and probably also non-physical jobs, know which co-workers we get along with, which ones we work well as a mini-team with, and who we don't. I have every reason to believe that the ponies would be the same way, and that they'd like to pair with somepony who pulled about the same as they do, strength-wise, and who they knew and understood well. (I further think that they'd prefer getting-alonginess over raw strength.) It hasn't come up in the show, as far as I know, but I think if there are a bunch of them working together for something, it would wind up with Applejack pairing with Apple Honey, maybe, and Cherry Berry pairing with Comet Tail, Carrot Top with Written Script, and so forth. They'd probably also have a preference for sides (left or right) and would stick with that whenever they could.
Episode screencap
Earlier on I mentioned how an evener would be used to help equalize pulling force. And I implied that ideally, you wanted all the ponies to pull with equal force. Sadly, that rule only holds true when it comes to straight lines. When the wagon goes around a corner, the leaders need to slow down a bit or else they'll pull the traces too tight and wind up tripping the horses behind them.
This is also something that experienced ponies would know, but it's a place where younger ponies might wind up getting in trouble. I can especially imagine the first time a filly or colt takes a place in a six pony hitch—at the front—them getting too eager and trying to show that they're pulling their weight, and ultimately pulling somepony behind them off their hooves.
Now we've got all the important bits on the equine end dealt with; coming up next we're going to discuss wagons and other loads pulled by said ponies.
I wonder how much training it takes for a group of ponies to work together as a team? Sure unlike real horses they can talk to each other more but there's probably a few things to learn before you get up to speed (both literally and figuratively) there's probably some slang that different teams have for different manoeuvres.
Plus there's always going to be a new guy who everypony can tell you keeps messing up, of course the 'new guy' might have been working for the team for 10 years but until there's another new guy he's still the new guy and everyone remembers all the mistakes he made.
I would have said the wagon would have been next, actually. Guess I was wrong.
I’m just appreciative that you didn’t put the cart before the horse.
This strikes me as the Equestria equivalent of heavy industrial equipment.
So you're assuming that gender dimorphism makes stallions the larger/stronger gender, huh? Who're the biggest ponies in the show again?
That last picture:
"Haha, Steve! I told you you can't pull straight after hitting the salt."
4871202
Yeah, but outside of the alicorns, almost all of the large ponies are stallions.
4871171
Probably not a huge amount, honestly. Being able to talk specifically really helps. In some videos I've seen of new horses learning to work on a team, they do have trouble, but that mostly seems to be because they don't know what's expected of them, and they're also trying to make things easier on themselves by trying to pull the load a different way than they're supposed to go (which, of course, makes it harder on the other pony in the team). I think that most farmponies would learn to pull a wagon and then a plow when they were fairly young, and from that they'd have all the basics down. After that, it would be talking with their partner and working together well enough to know what their partner is going to do and what they have to do.
Yeah, there probably is some slang, but I think that in general, ponies don't move around all that much, and the local lingo would likely be known by everypony. Maybe if they're working in a different city, and it might be a problem with the Guard (although they'd probably know all the regional slang).
Oh, yeah, whenever somepony new joins the crew, he's the new guy until somepony else new joins.
In one of my stories, a new pony starts off on delivery wagons, then as an additional brakepony on downhills, then the front team, then the back team as they grow to trust his strength and abilities.
4871198
There's actually a lot of stuff between the horse and the wagon, and it's all important.
Although if the horse is being used to provide additional braking on a downhill section, that's where you want the cart to be.
4871201
It just lacks any sort of practicality. Even if you had room to turn it, you'd need the ponies on the outside edge to be practically galloping, while the ones on the inside edge would have to be stepping in place. Maybe, if it had wheels, they could back up, but if it's a plow or something, backing up wouldn't be an option. I have to figure that turning radius is another reason that they usually didn't go too wide with horses (I've never seen any pictures of more than four wide). I've found pictures of 40 or more, but that's for show, not for any practical reason.
...actually, never mind; here's pictures of a guy using 46 Percherons to plow.
4871202
pre00.deviantart.net/6686/th/pre/i/2015/277/d/a/trouble_shoes_and_celestia_by_missgoldendragon-d8v7dyi.png
Source
Barring those kinds of exceptions, in general, earth pony stallions appear to be the largest.
I learned (from the blog that picture came from) that the humane society used to give away winter shoes for working horses, to prevent slipping and falling.
4871278
and Troubleshoes is bigger than Celestia anyway
Although that does raise an interesting question--I mentioned in a comment that Celestia (and the other alicorns) probably have Earth Pony StrengthTM, and I can't help but wonder now if back in the early days of Equestria Celestia occasionally helped out her ponies by pulling wagons and such.
4871298
horsedrawnoccasions.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/unicorn-carriage-hire-3.jpg
This picture is, I am sure, totally legit. Those are without a doubt actual real unicorns.
Anyway, Rarity can't get all that uppity about unicorns not pulling wagons. She hauled a boatload of carts full of gems with a smile on her face, and she also hooked herself to a gambo cart when she was trying to impress Trenterhoof.
I do wonder then how much magic is in every day life in Equestria? If you look at how they hook up to their carts it must have some sort of magical link ups. I bet the Apple family’s equipment is much like modern cars that can be personalized for different drivers. Applejack hooks up and all the harness magically are set to her preferences while if Big Mac hooks up they are set to his. That would be a major time saver and something that I could see in the show.
4871406
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/340612/good-for-nearly-all-princess-labor-public-and-private
4871445
That's one way of looking at it, and of course from what we see in the show, it's not wrong. But I personally prefer a more realistic way of doing it. Heck, if it's straight-up magic, why not just tie the cart to their tail?
Again, it's possible, but I prefer the more realistic method myself. Plus, it's fun to learn about all this stuff.
4871515
That's a great story. And Rock Doves should be canon.
I wonder where those rigid shaft-wagon are comming from, they are everywhere these day. My guess is that it's easier to draw, but I wonder who thought of it first.
I totally understand your point with how a team would need to work; I learned how to pedal on a tandem bike, you need to be able to ride just in synch with your partner, both in term of strengt and cadence.
4872611
There are certainly single-axle rigid shaft wagons, and some designs of tandem axle also have rigid shafts, designed for a single horse:
img-aws.ehowcdn.com/750x428p/photos.demandstudios.com/getty/article/41/18/87658391_XS.jpg
As an example
I don't know what the advantages and disadvantages of the different designs are. I think that the rigid shaft wagons can only be pulled by one horse, whereas the center pole types can be pulled by as many as you need, and that may be the important difference.
That's something that I've never personally tried, but I can see how that would be the case. One of my cousins used to row on a team, and that's another thing where you all have to be in sync for good results.
Even if it’s just a story, I still can’t help wonder how much weight Santa clause pulls to need nine reindeer. Well it reindeer are even settle for pulling