Looks good to me, Ken. For which road are you going to letter it? That’ll give you a better idea of a colour for the boom car. I added a home-made spring to mine to keep tension on the cables: otherwise you’ll be constantly re-rigging the sheaves.
Wayne
wow great info I was just looking at that
its like the boom is to light
nice idea to add a spring I have a ton of them
no road I guess B&M, maby a blue boom car
thanks for jumping in there
love to see some others work
please post
Ken
Since the boom is not intended to be other than “positionable” for photos, I did not find it necessary to add a spring. I agree with the other posters: if you follow the directions exactly, you’ll have no trouble with the kit. Patience and an Optivisor are key here. Here’s mine - the boom car is a wood craftsman kit from Scotia Scale Models. (Don’t think they are still in business - I got the kit back in the '80s.)
If you liked the Tichy Crane,check out Jordans new steam shovel.
wow
nice work
hey I did not get Microscale Decals
but I did make a iron girder 
here is a shot of my boom car
looks like I need a bit of weathering
Ken
I guess your right wayne
I seen M O W gray and just had to do it
don’t know what I was thinking
K
Actually, I answered before I saw the painted boom car. I deleted the post because I thought it irrelevant, after the fact. Once you get a bit of weathering on everything, they’ll look a lot more like they belong together. All of my MoW equipment is painted boxcar red, so nothing really stands out from the rest. That spring that I spoke of earlier, to keep the cables taut, is just a length of .015" music wire. I drilled a suitable hole into the floor beneath and slightly to the rear of the front cable drum, then bent the wire into an incompletely formed “L”. The short arm is inserted into the hole, the outside of the “elbow” bears against the bottom of the cable drum, and the long arm rests atop the heavy crosspiece at the base of the boom. The effect is to put downward pressure on the boom, keeping the cables tight and in the grooves of the sheaves.
Wayne
Hello wow these are some really nice kits you guys have there. I am in the home starch on mine but I do have one question I got some copper crap irons and some plastic ones which ones do you use? and when I get it done I will post some pics. Thanks Frank
I’m surprised that your copper and plastic irons got by the “censor” [(-D]. I don’t recall getting any plastic ones with mine, although they would’ve gone directly to the plastic re-cycling bin. The wire grabs look much better, in my opinion, are closer to scale-size and more durable, too. I use a #79 drill to make the holes where required, then install the grab with an .020" or .030" spacer behind it. With the spacer in place, press the grab tightly to it, then bend over the protruding legs of the grab on the back of the area where the grab is being installed. Remove the spacer, press the bent-over legs against the back of the area, and apply a drop of ca to both legs, from the back. (If you don’t remove the spacer before applying the ca, it can sometimes “wick” through the holes, gluing the spacer in place - or, so I’ve heard.)[:-^]
Wayne
Boy there was some great work displayed here. Several years ago, I became interested in building an old time Ohio Locomotive logging crane after I ran across plans and photos in the Fall of 1986 issue of “Timberbeast”. I used a Walthers 25 ton MOW diesel crane as a start. ( I think this model was originally manufactured by Tru-Scale) The Ohio Crane Company goes back to 1909 and they sold a lot of their steam powered cranes to loggers including a few wood burners one of which I tried to model from a photograph in Timberbeast. I added a boiler and other details inside the cab. It took a lot of guess work with regard to how the power was transmitted to the wheels. On a trip to Cannon Beach from Portland OR, I was lucky to run into a prototype at Camp 18 ( A restaurant with loads of old logging equipment on the grounds) I was pleased to note that I made fairly accurate guesses. However, my model is actually powered by the tender. ( From an old Model Power 2-8-0 that had the motor in the tender.)
Peter Smith, Memphis
Nice job, Peter, and some imaginative engineering using the tender as the power source.
Wayne
we look back on these projects
where did we get the time
Hello well it took some time but here are some pics of my crane no boom car yet but on its way. What do you think? Have a nice day Frank
Budliner good looking models. I especially like those strongbacks laying on the deck of your boom car. Where they part of the kit, or did you scratch build them?
Folks:
Great looking crane. Would have been really neat to see in action.
About the only thing I have to offer here is something from a 1940s book I read. It was said that RRs tended to letter and number their cranes as unobtrusively as possible, to the point that the Erie even blacked out the relevant part of the “Bucyrus Erie” trademark on the boom.
The Jordan steam shovel’s prototype, btw, was produced by the “Erie” part of B-E, when it was an independent concern.