Entry posted by jeff_p
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Hands up, I know, it's a Great Western Railways 6 Ton hand operated crane ... but, well, it was calling to me so I fell for it and picked it up from eBay. At the time I was having trouble finding Cambrian as a vendor which was why I was scanning through the many, many things eBay suggested I couldn't do without 
I have subsequently "found" Cambrian and now have a small set of SR bolster wagons to put together at some stage in the future.
Anyway, a corner of the layout is destined to be some rural timber yard scene, and I thought (at the time) that a small crane would fit into that scope nicely. The fact that it wasn't "home grown" could be explained away with something like "bought in cheap by the mill owner", and besides, "Southern Railways wasn't primarily goods focused, so perhaps they too bought in rolling stock appropriately". I've spent some time looking (on line) for evidence of mobile cranes in Southern use, and some do turn up. Obviously the "big" stuff for re-railing etc., but the occasional smaller one too. I guess they were not that photogenic at the time.
This one is certainly interesting, found in Flickr, a picture posted by "Les Chatfield" (probably somebody here, thank you Les):
Great, so there is some form of precedent, that's good enough for me.
From a blogging point of view, I've missed out on some of the build steps (as I simply didn't think to photo them at the time). So we catch me here with the two bases formed and me (behind the camera) scratching my head about how the rest of the pieces fit together:
I had re-invented the "block of metal and magnets" trick for holding things firmly and square. I'm sure this has been done many times before but, for me, it was bit of a light bulb moment and delayed building the kit while a pile of blue fridge magnets were delivered and I hacked the end off a piece of steel and squared it off. This made piecing together all the big sections much simpler. Here it can be seen holding the start of the frame for the crane while the glue does its stuff:
So, progress being made, but the jib itself took a little while for me to convince myself I had it right, and that I'd got the necessary pieces fitting together fairly well. The jib half built, as is the body of the crane itself:
... closer ...
Now here is the point where I grabbed the managements glasses; they're thicker than mine:
This last picture covers some significant work, the obvious ones of sorting out the hooks and cleaning them up but also, less obviously, repairing two of the long thin links from the jib to the top of the crane body. The molding process had fallen just shy of fulling forming all four of the pieces, so two of them needed pieces of spru (?) grafting into the missing space and then the reformed piece gently working back to size(ish). Bit of a challenge, but rather satisfying when completed. Final result, unpainted, thus:
Many extra steps and fiddly things have been, erm .. glossed over, to get to this point. For example, side running boards stowed or out? What I did forget, was to place some weight inside the crane counter weight. Without it the crane naturally rests jib down. Later on you'll see a small square hole in the bottom of that area through which I rectified that omission 
Prime with grey:
Now try and pick a colour. I know what, how about grey, but dirty:
Then finally, for the moment that is:
Some things remain to be completed:
- The ride height of match wagon and crane seem slightly out. This is almost certainly because I have used the same 8 spoke wheels for both, but the instructions which came with the crane definitely mentioned the crane itself using larger wheels. I need to find some.
- I have the three link chains to go between them, just need to fit them.
- Couplings at the ends? Yes, definitely. Almost certainly going to settle on Spratt and Winkle couplings, but until we've undertaken some trial conversions and seen how these cope with the many curves on the layout that's not a 100% decision yet.
- Ballast? Yes, definitely. Both wagons are inevitably light and need weighing down. I need to find a source of clean lead (or something) and some guidelines for how much.
- Tie down chain and other match wagon additions. When the crane is on the move the tip of the jib should be chained securely to the corners of the match wagon for obvious reasons. The chain an other pieces are awaiting some painting and placement.
- Some more detailed weathering of both chassis with both grease and rust marks required.
I'll call this a day now, and pick out the typing mistakes tomorrow 
Jeff
[Edit] It's tomorrow. Lesson from last night: Don't write a blog into the night - my writing skills are definitely diminished. Also forgot to mention that I did fit brass bearings into the wagons.
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