The neckyoke shown, has the strap from horse (usually wearing a light buggy collar, sometimes breastcollar harness), run thru the footman’s loop and back to the buckle end of strap near horse. Some folks ran the strap around the neckyoke end and thru the horse collar back to the buckle end. The footman’s loop prevents strap from coming loose or falling off the yoke end while driving.
For your snap under harness collar, you probably will want the ring fastened on the neckyoke end to fasten the snap to. This kind of yoke is usually heavier built, since this is a draft animal style of attachment. Make sure the center of yoke has the right kind of attachment to work on the lighter wagon pole end. AND I would put a safety strap with an anchor D-ring on my pole, so the yoke CAN NOT fall off until strap is unbuckled.
I expect you do need to measure height of axles when wheels are on. Then you have to figure how much box goes forward of that, to allow clearance of the metal yoke parts and how forward the bend is where it meets the wood pole. Plus height of the animals you plan to use. You want pole running about midway of their barrel, but you will have some drop down using the neckyoke with pole holder BELOW that. So that will mean you need to measure ponies in harness, to where the collar snap is, that holds the yoke on. Could be your pole length height is needing to be rather short, using ponies! You always want the pole running slightly uphill to the neckyoke. This is where the wagon end of pole can’t be too high for the animals. Your metal yoke for the axles may need to just be sweeping forward, not much rise at all, to fit ponies. The singletrees and evener will also be rather wide. This is the style for working animals, no traces rubbing them, during all day working. Looks odd now, but ALL the buggies, light wagons are set up this way.
If you were using lighter Driving harness, light buggy collars, the yoke might be a couple inches taller fastened shorter to the collars, than what you will have using the lower placed snaps. Probably not much difference though, to matter greatly. I haven’t really seen many folks using breastcollar harness with this kind of neckyoke. Leather breastcollars don’t give enough support to use with this kind of neckyoke, lot of weight on the neck strap over horse mane, so not a good idea for the horses.
Give the carriage folks a call, ask THEM how they would make measurements to fit animals to vehicle. I bet they get this kind of call pretty often. Husband just eyeballs it, fitted the pole to the horses and vehicle. He started with a good used pole and hardware. Bought a new neckyoke because pole didn’t have one. He is VERY good at metal working, so anything that needed adjusting, he just modified. However some metals are hard to change, like cast parts. While steel stock can be more easily heated and bent to fit the shape needed. Real easy to break cast metals, quite unforgiving of any mistakes.
You can buy a pole ready-made or you can get a “kit” and make your own. I probably would send in my measurements, purchase a ready-made pole and neckyoke set-up. You were quite far from any local buggy shops if I remember. So no local help with putting stuff together and fitting it to the animals.
