6/3/2011 UPDATE: NWTA's ST240 rolled out of the factory today! Delivered just in time for the Operator training happening this weekend at Stub Stewart State Park as part of the State Parks / National Trails Day events. Main page about TDPP is at http://nw-trail.org/TDPP, or click Resources > Trail Dev Partnership on main menu.
If successful, a January 2010 grant application for a brand new single track building machine will form the nucleus of a new trail building partnership between Northwest Trail Alliance and more than a dozen government agencies and mountain biking organizations in NW Oreg
on and SW Washington. The Single Track ST240, built specifically for trail construction, comes with a price tag of $94,000 (including accessories, closed trailer, and operator training), but the majority of the funds would be covered by the grant from Oregon Parks and Recreation Department (OPRD), which would be awarded in May 2010. By regulation, 20 percent of the cost of the project must come from other sources, and Northwest Trail Alliance project lead Joe Rykowski hopes donations from business supporters will help make up for a good chunk of that sum.
"I believe we need to do more to prove we are a resource dedicated to building the trails we want to ride - not simply asking land managers to build trails for us,” says Rykowski. Northwest Trail Alliance’s board green-lighted Portland-area trail builder Rykowski’s proposal in October. According to Rykowski, partnerships will form the other component of the program. Already, he has gathered letters of support from the BLM and Oregon Parks and Recreation, and envisions an arrangement whereby the machine and trail building expertise will be shared amongst a score of regional agencies and mountain biking organizations.
The ST240 was designed and built by a local Oregon trail builder (singletracktools.com) and is manufactured at an Oregon facility which has been building mechanized equipment for over 20 years. The ST240 has heavy duty grubbing bucket with rugged thumb, variable angled blade, computerized hydraulics which are full time radio controlled (operators can step away from machine on more hazardous terrain), variable width tread (from 24" to 36" inches), and massive Sauer-Danfoss direct drive wheel motors. In other words, it’s a single track-maker’s dream that should save time and money on any trail building project.
