Scratch-built card and styrene structures (based on real buildings around London Bridge)

[MikeHemmings]

Heath and safety has changed the way  buildings are erected. 

Mike

[CDGfife]

Certainly the sites I was on mid to late 80s of this type all had a tower crane and brick/block pallets were unloaded from the lorry by the crane and hoisted to each floor where they were either dropped (by the tower crane and banksman) direct onto scaffolding positions or once the floor was in dropped centrally and then moved around by manual pallet truck.  I did have a mate on a central London site who raved about their "pallet lift" which was a temporary structure up the middle of the building where you could lift pallets without waiting on the crane, and I also know that these were used in London where access for tower crane erecting/swing was restricted, but I'm not sure when that practice would have started.

 

From memory, I did not see regular hiab deliveries on any of my sites in the midlands until the late 80s and I don't think truck-hiabs would lift a pallet of blocks very far from the vehicle.  I've certainly never seen one load to first floor.  When I ended up making precast concrete, our transport firm turned up one day with "the biggest hiab in England" according to the driver.  Couple of weeks later he'd overturned it lifting off a carboy from the middle of his trailer onto the floor, when the ground had moved under one of his supports slightly.  That should give an idea of how little radius of load these things have/had.

 

Hope that helps

 

Bricks/blocks/mixers etc all looking great and adding to the picture nicely.

 

Cheers

 

Chris

[grahame]

Interesting about the 'pallet lift' when tower cranes were ruled out due to restricted access.

 

You do get modern truck cranes making brick and block deliveries these days like this:

 

 

but I don't recall them in the mid 70s - could be wrong thou. And yep, the basic hiab type cranes of those days would probably have struggled.

 

I guess a major issue is in trying to replicate a construction site from 45 years ago when things have massively changed in that time (regulations, standards, HSE, technology, working practices, materials, techniques, etc). Film of work on the reconstruction of the station area in the mid 70s shows very much a manual approach with workers in tee shirts and shorts with no hi-vis and very few hard hats. Finding specific period pics is quite difficult. 

 

 

[CDGfife]

Graham you are totally right.  I well recall the general laxity regarding (for example) hard hats on mid eighties sites.  We had many a campaign to educate!  Also even then most moving was done by labour and the tower crane.

 

The Bimson artic pic is a similar size and format to the one my toppling story was about.  They had a surprisingly short throw for anything heavy back in the eighties/early nineties.  I agree they were, in my recollection, a late eighties/early nineties proliferation.  Before then we used to charge demurage with the precast stuff if our lorry had been on site waiting for a tower crane slot for over an hour!

 

To be honest my suspicion is that your site would probably have had a tower crane, (possibly a luffing jib one given the tight site radius and close buildings) as the precast flooring slabs would need to be lifted in and parking a mobile crane on a London street for the day to do this was certainly a no no (or at least very expensive) mid eighties and probably long before then!

 

The switch from manual to mechanised construction did gather pace with the design changes brought about by precast flooring availability.  With manual labour it was easier to construct an in-situ slab as everything could be carried to the pour site, and bricks and the like were transported up ladder/stairs in hods, but these sites still more often than not had a crane of some sort until very late in the construction process.

 

Cheers

 

Chris 

[grahame]

I did have suspicions that I'd need a tower crane but was trying to avoid having to make one (probably very tricky in N/2mm) and with those commercially available looking rather chunky and out of period but maybe I could bash one of these (although they're £30):

 

 

My other concerns were what they looked like in the 70s and where to locate it. But I've just come across a website showing the building of Woking town centre (just down the road from me) in 1973 with the crane in the middle of a building (not steel framed but reinforced concrete admittedly). And check out the labourers with very little protective wear (no gloves, hard hats, hi-vis and it also doesn't even look like protective boots).

 

But the crane still looks like a complex build . . . . 

 

 

 

 

This pic from 1950s in London also shows a very much relaxed approach - look at the worker hanging on the beam - although it doesn't appear to have a tower crane but has ladders (see far left and right):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 23, 2020 by grahame

[CDGfife]

In my experience, up through the middle of the building as your Woking photo, would be exactly the norm, with a hole left in (designed into) the floor structure to accommodate and then plugged once the crane is done with.  On my first site I went over on a Sunday to watch them take the tower crane down - there was some really frightening hanging on beams that day!!

 

The Woking crane is pretty much how I remember ours being.  Can't see who the contractor is but it's not a Taylor Woodrow crane as it has no branding.  The TW cranes were all a horrible lime green colour with the TW logo (4 men pulling a rope) in red on a white panel between the kentledge ballast and the cab on the rear jib.  I think the only reason your building would not have one like this is if they could not get swinging rights for the jib above the next door buildings, in which case a luffing jib type would have been fitted but these were rarer than the standards.

 

Look at all those trip hazards around the portable saw in the third photo!!!  Had a chap badly cut his wrist on one of those on the first floor slab at Tamworth and the only way they could get him and the other lad (who was holding his tourniquet) off the slab together was to put them both in the concrete skip and crane them off to the waiting ambulance.

 

I think the only reason the mobile is being used in the last photo is because they are bridging the road so could close it anyway.

 

Cheers

 

CDG

[grahame]

I guess I'd have to bash any fixed tower crane model in to being a luffing jib crane. There is also this in N gauge scale one which is somewhat cheaper but appears a little chunkier and would probably need a fair bit of hacking to re-configure:

 

 

The problem seems to be finding suitable photos of them in the 1970s on which to base it on. All the ones that come up on searches look far too modern and 21st century.

 

 

 

 

[Siberian Snooper]

Where the crane is in the middle of the building, I think the hole in some cases was turned into the lift shaft, with the mechanism added on the top of building.

 

 

[CDGfife]

Luffing jibs until fairly recently were much more common on the continent (Liebher were the go-to brand) so you might find a 70s luffing jib bash-able from one of the euro kits?  I agree both the models shown so far are quite chunky.  Time for the 3d printing folks to come up with some modular sections that can be fitted to any height/jib lengths?  Alternatively some very burnt fingers from soldering up and etch or three!!!

 

The towers I remember from the eighties looked very similar to the Woking one with in-line cab.  We did have a couple that had the cab forward of the tower but I think side cabs were a bit later again.

 

Quite often lift shafts (or stair wells) were used for crane holes, although most lift shafts would have been slip formed of concrete in-situ and that action would have required the crane to position the concrete skip over the formwork, which is tricky if too close to the crane tower.  At least 2 of my sites just had a floor slab hole left for filling later and this was more defined by the structural design of the building (i.e. where they could easily leave a hole for later filling.

 

Cheers

 

CDG

 

[grahame]

As a break from cranes and construction sites here's a project that I've been slowly working on for many months (if not years) just to show that I'm still considering the trains and railway. It's the renovation of a 2-EPB that I made many years ago ,including changing the colour from green to blue. The model is unmotorised so would be accompanied with a 4 car motorised unit to form a 6 car train. Although still not finished, here's the driving trailer. The roof is not fixed in place and the body is just resting on the bogies which need some more work. The MBSO car is still in even more bits:

 

 

 

[Stubby47]

Trains ?  You've having trains in this as well ?

[grahame]

43 minutes ago, Stubby47 said:

Trains ?  You've having trains in this as well ?

 

'fraid so.

A bit of an imposition, I know, but, well, you know . . . . needs must.

;-)

 

[Ian Morgan]

and they are so much smaller than the buildings ...

[phil_sutters]

Here's a big one from the Aylesbury Estate, a couple of miles south of London Bridge, in 1963. I worked there as manager of a day centre for people of working age who had disabilities, in the 1970s. This is from https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/

This type of crane was modular and could be built with towers of a wide variety of heights.

Edited June 25, 2020 by phil_sutters
To add a credit.

[Nick Holliday]

On 23/06/2020 at 18:46, CDGfife said:

Luffing jibs until fairly recently were much more common on the continent (Liebher were the go-to brand) so you might find a 70s luffing jib bash-able from one of the euro kits?  I agree both the models shown so far are quite chunky.  Time for the 3d printing folks to come up with some modular sections that can be fitted to any height/jib lengths?  Alternatively some very burnt fingers from soldering up and etch or three!!!

In the 70's luffing jib cranes were very rare. As you say, Liebherr were the go-to company, with their 50HB being the most common. They were not particularly heavy lifters, less than a full cubic yard skip at full radius, and had a fairly short jib, which restricted their usefulness, although handy in confined spaces. By the eighties they were getting rather long in the tooth, and, being hydraulic, this manifested itself in the jib slowly sagging when out of use, which cold be quite awkward.

The current designs of luffing jib cranes are considerably larger and more effective.  Their proliferation came about partly because of the rise of the awareness of air-space trespassing, which many neighbouring land owners see as a blank cheque. When I started in the industry in 1980 it was the norm to oversail adjacent properties with your tower crane; you would just send each neighbour a nice letter, informing them of what you proposed to do, and assuring them that you were fully insured for any eventuality. If anyone objected, you would promise not to carry any loads over their property, but that was all. Once lawyers got involved, things got out of hand, and it became cheaper to pay £1,000 per week extra to hire a luffing jib crane which could be configured not to go beyond your site boundaries, than to pay the King's Ransom some people were led to expect. My first tangle with this came on a constricted London site next door to a church, when the rector cheekily asked for a £1,000 donation in compensation for our jib interfering with his direct line to head-office! My company were happy to do so, but perhaps this was the opening of this particular Pandora's box!

On 23/06/2020 at 18:46, CDGfife said:

The towers I remember from the eighties looked very similar to the Woking one with in-line cab.  We did have a couple that had the cab forward of the tower but I think side cabs were a bit later again.

There are/were a number of different tower crane suppliers, and each might have its own style of cab.  Up until the eighties most major construction companies had their own plant divisions, and would tend to focus on one particular brand, for financial or maintenance reasons. So Taylor Woodrow site cranes might look very different from a Mowlem or Wates crane, apart from the distinctive liveries they carried. By the end of the eighties specialist crane hire companies had taken over most of the market, as contractors liquidised their assets, turning their plant yards into Tescos or housing estates. Some of the more modern cranes have most unusual cab designs and locations, as this website demonstrates. http://www.cranesetc.co.uk/photoarchive/photoindex.html

On 23/06/2020 at 18:46, CDGfife said:

Quite often lift shafts (or stair wells) were used for crane holes, although most lift shafts would have been slip formed of concrete in-situ and that action would have required the crane to position the concrete skip over the formwork, which is tricky if too close to the crane tower.  At least 2 of my sites just had a floor slab hole left for filling later and this was more defined by the structural design of the building (i.e. where they could easily leave a hole for later filling.

 

Cheers

 

CDG

 

As a construction planner, it was often my task to determine where the tower crane might be most effectively located. When I first started it was quite common to locate the crane in a lift shaft. It was then accepted that, although awkward, the positioning and removal of the formwork for the walls, and the placing of the concrete, could be carried out in a fairly safe manner, but with a bit of extra manual effort, but modern health and safety, combined with more sophisticated formwork systems, mean that this is now seldom an option. Walls were not generally slip-formed, a very expensive process in those days, but the walls would be cast in-situ on a floor by floor basis.

As for leaving holes, on many occasions the location would be dependent on a variety of considerations, and sometimes the optimum positioning required the structural engineers to adjust their design to get things to work. 

Edited June 26, 2020 by Nick Holliday

[grahame]

Thanks for all the crane comments, feedback and pics.

 

I think I'll just purchase that cheap DARP one and see what I can do with it to make it look more appropriate as a period tower crane and less chunky. The period ones seem to have a fairly basic squared cab just below the jib, in line with the tower (not offset) and above the pivot rotate point (slew ring unit?). It's fairly small so wouldn't over overfly much adjacent property/land. And if I find anything more suitable later I can simply replace it. I'll locate it in the building framework although it possibly wouldn't have had a lift shaft. 

 

Edit:

Now ordered it, and had to go for the taller one as I don't think the other would have cleared the building behind. Although the height is given I assume that the total height and not just to the boom/jib level.

 

Edited June 26, 2020 by grahame

[grahame]

Slow progress on the EPB renovation - I've stripped the two roofs, cleaned and tidied them and given them a coat of primer. The MBSO still needs a fair bit of work. But I thought I'd also check out my other two car units to see if they needed some upgrading and renovation. And, yep, they do, although despite that I'm pleased how they've held up over time and still look representational. Here they are lined up; left to right; the blue un-motorised 2-EPB, 6225 2-EPB in blue/grey and 6056 blue 2-HAP.

 

 

[grahame]

I thought I'd check out some of the other units to see if anything needs doing. And very unfortunately yes. Here's a couple of 4-CIGs and both need work. There's damage to roofs, missing vents, missing horns and broken off couplers. Such is the rigours of exhibition use. But fortunately they won't have to undergo that again. 

 

[grahame]

The DAPR tower crane kit arrived in todays post. Here are the bits. There is a little flash to be cleaned off but other than that it's quite straightforward and fortunately a little finer than I thought it would be. The 3D printing (if that is how it it manufactured) is very smooth with no stratification ridges.

 

 

However, I won't be building it as designed and will hopefully bash it in to something more individual and appropriate for what I want. I need to sit down and consider what I can, and is necessary, to do to improve it. Then to crack on with some modelling . . . . 

 

 

 

 

[grahame]

I thought I'd start on the boom/jib as that is the more visible part with much of the upright tower to be located inside the building steel framework. I've slimmed the sides down by cutting off part of the edge strips from the top and bottom (although they now need to be filed to an angle to join along the top ridge) and have started to reduce the chunkiness of the floor section of the boom/jib by similarly trimming off the edge members. In the pic below you can see where I've partially cut one side away up to the point of the knife. I've also cut off the little pyramid mouldings:

 

 

 

[grahame]

Six large boom counterbalance weights for what seems like quite a small jib seems a bit excessive, well, to me at least. The other tower cranes I've looked at (and pictured above) don't have that amount so I've carved off three of them. Just hope that's in keeping, but at least it'll make it more individual.

 

 

[grahame]

Most of the lifting/working jib and counter-jib is now in place along with the cathead and tie rods.  The counter balance weights have been reduced in number. There's still some tidying up required but the primer helps see what is required. Bearing in mind this is N/2mm scale and mostly made from 3D printed acrylic it's quite fragile and small:

 

 

Next I've got to scratch build the in-line cab and slewing unit to sit on the top of the mast. Plus, of course, construct the mast. And then painting. 

 

 

 

[grahame]

I've been thinking about what colour to paint the crane. I thought they were all basically yellow or orange but having done some research and looked through dozens of pics of them there are many different colours used - yellow, orange, red, blue, silver, white, and the one used for the Nat West Tower was lime green. I guess that against the light sky background they all just appear dark and the colour is not obvious when you look up at them. Presumably I'll be able to choose a suitable colour from the range of Halfords car colours I have.

;-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[grahame]

I've knocked up a very basic cuboid cab from plasticard. I'll have to keep the bottom open so that it can be glazed after painting. And it does need a little tidying up:

 

 

It's a little smaller and more angular than the rounded modern style off-set one supplied with the kit and I think it's more in keeping with the period as well as being able to be installed inline with the mast.

 

 

 

 

[grahame]

With most of the components held together by blu-tac I've temporarily erected the crane to make a comparison with the model kit promo pic:

 

 

I'm quite please that I've managed to get the boom/jib looking finer and incorporate an in-line more period looking cab. I still need to make the trolley that the hook block hangs from and a better slewing ring unit.