I needed a small Burro crane for MOW work on my narrowgauge. No one makes such a thing but Custom Finishing Models makes a HO standard gauge version. That’s usually close enough for me. First I converted the running gear to HOn3 with some creative hacking.
I wasn’t happy with the quality of the cast wheels. It was meant to pose, not to roll. Then I recalled a small Grandt Line cast bronze push cart that had a nice set of HOn3 wheelsets. It doesn’t have couplers, so doesn’t need to roll. A quick check showed the swap would work.
I had to open up the slot the axle rode in some, as it was thicker on these wheelsets. I should have re-axled them to extend out to the sideframes, but I didn’t think it would be a very visible mod. So it rolls pretty much as above.
I also needed to cut away part of the cast deck and endbeam to properly situate the Kadee 705 couplers I put on it.
The coupler mounts aren’t quite right, but they work and I was fearing cutting away too much of the frame. But it came out OK with a little paint.
The electro-magnet seems handy, so I rigged it like that. I’d like to get a clamshell and dragline buckets. I think Custom Finishing makes a clamshell, but not sure about the dragline bucket.
One oddity is that the Model 30 kit came with the instructions for the Model 40. At first I thought I had missing parts, then figured out it was missing correct insrtructions. But all turned out pretty well.
The boom is long enough it is too long for use with a standard DRGW flatcar. I picjed up a Tichy HO boom car. It’s a work in progress, and I also narrowgauged
The flatcar was more of a project to narriw gauge than the Burro was, plus it had a low hanging centersill that the shorter overall HOn3 trucks will let drag if not fixed. You end up having to cut off some of its plastic web on the bottom of that. Hoping paint helps, but no one looks under your cars if you don’t wreck them.
Might not be the best way to power it but you could copy the real old Athearn way. A slot above each axle facing end to end gets a rubber band around it and around the shafts of a very small motor in the cab. They ran like the proverbial bat but with DCC could be controlable.
Mike, Thanks for posting the Gandy Dancer Hobbies link, good to see Sheepscot products still available. Those brass crane boom kits might be just the ticket for those desiring a finely detailed boom for their model.
