Like my recently finished DCC Stewart F3, the Tichy crane has sat in the box for 30 years. I have Champ black and white decals.
For those of you who have actually built one, what color did you paint it and did you paint it before assemby? There are oodles of parts buried inside. Most cranes are black in the pictures, but the one at the museum in Ogden is gray, though it could be a faded/weatherd silver. I’ve seen later cranes yellow or red.
My freelance Nothern & Potomac does not have to follow a specific prototype color scheme.
In exchange for your advice, I am sharing this video on one in modern demonstration.
Because the majority of parts were so small, pre-painting was not really an option since I was using Tenax cement at the time. Pre-painting would have required scraping the paint off or using ACC, neither of which sounded like a good option.
I seem to recall being able to paint assemblies such as the engine/winch; boom and cab parts then doing the final assembly and minor touch-up.
It seems to me that bright colors are a later preference. Even then, such as the B&O when they went to bright Chinese-red for their wreck train cars, the big hook was still black.
I pre-painted some of the interior mechanical stuff, but most was airbrushed after assembly, using a mixed boxcar red. I brush-painted the cable grooves in the sheaves after initial assembly. The sliding doors are in consideration of Canadian winters…
One important addition, not included in the box nor mentioned in the instructions, is a piece of piano wire, installed in the floor of the cab and extending outward within the boom. It’s meant to place downward pressure on the boom, which helps to keep those “cables” in place.
When not on the layout, the crane and its tender are stored upright, in a box, but some unavoidable rough handling one time caused the cables to come off their respective sheaves, even though a spring (not strong enough, apparently) had been installed.
It was quite the task to reposition the cables, almost to where I was considering disassembly for better access, but I finally got everything back where it belongs.
The photos remind me that I should add some windows to all of my crane-tender flatcars.
Is it possible to get a close-up at any angle to show this add-on? I’d like to steal this from you to add to that handsome handful I have pilfered from your brain and bench to date.
A lot of steam cranes were converted to diesel at the end of steam era. A simple change would be to cut off the steam boiler stack, cover the hole with thin styrene sheet and add a piece of wire of a size to be a diesel engine exhaust.
John, here are a couple of photos of the “tension spring”. I used .040" piano wire, bent into an L-shape. After slipping it inside the boom, the short foot of the “L” was inserted, from the bottom, into a pre-drilled hole in the lower front cable drum. I probably should have shortened it more, as it sticks out of the top of the drum, as you can see. I didn’t feel like taking it back out, though, and don’t find that it’s all that objectionable.
The crane can now be turned upside down (good for major derailments of the crane, especially off a couple of my higher bridges) without the boom flopping about, or the cables leaving their assigned places.
Here’s the lower end of the spring…
…and the upper end…
The pressure point on the boom is just to the right of the cabled sheaves in the third photo.
I added the spring after the crane was in-service, and honestly don’t recall how I got the foot of the “L” into the hole. At the time, all of the cables were off their sheaves, so it was possible to lift the boom as much as was necessary, but the hole, from the bottom, is not in a position where the wire could easily have been inserted. There’s a slight chance that the cable drum was put in place, originally, without being cemented, but can’t say for sure. The angle of the wire at the base of the “L” is a bit sharper than 90°, but that’s probably due to where I was able to drill the hole.
This fix has been in place for several years, I think, with no adverse effects on any part of the crane.
I added a similar spring to my Walthers American derr
It looks like the new tension rod rests with downward pressure at the upper end against the cross bracing on the underside of the boom. Is that correct?
BTW, nice steal and update on the ROCO. And a tidy fit along with its idler car on your turntable. How big is the TT?
BTW-II, by the times of your posts, do you ever sleep?
Yes, AHM sold that one for years. I might still have one somewhere, weathered but not otherwise modified. It was “modern” enough looking that I assume it was meant to be a diesel powered prototype.
On the HO Seeker website you can find it in the 1967 AHM catalog, under Covered Hopper/MOW.
The turntable is 89’ long - as big as I could fit into the available real estate…
It’s basically a block of wood mounted on a electric mixer shaft, with Atlas girders stuck on the sides - manually operated.
Longtime nightshift worker - in my blood, I guess.
Normally, the boom is in the lowest position allowed by the length the builder leaves the cables, but it can raise to its highest limit, simply by lifting it. Unfortunately, that action allows all of the cable to come off the sheaves.
It took me a while to learn this — but, IF I think I might need an item anytime in the future I try to get a few, and maybe an extra, for that unknown future project.
Funny thing about those Life-Like/Walthers Scene Masters items. Some things disappeared pretty quickly like those generators and the Massey Ferguson tractors. Other things, like the corn harvesters and the big gears seem to be multiplying.
