Blog- Barry Ten's GWR/WR Blog - Tweaking the Bachmann Highley yard crane

RSS Fetcher · February 21, 2015

The Bachmann model of the Highley yard crane is quite an attractive little model, but let down by the solid resin castings of what should be spoked wheels. The computer generated pre-production images showed the wheels as properly spoked, but by the time the model came out the decision had presumably been made to do them as rather crude solid wheels. Incidentally there isn't a lamp growing from the top of the crane!

My initial plan had been to cannibalise some replacement wheels from one or other yard crane kits, but unfortunately none of the ones I had (set aside for future projects) were close to the diameter needed. I then thought about scrapping the Bachmann crane in its entirely, while retaining the rather nice base, but that seemed wasteful.

I decided to bite the bullet instead and see if I could turn the solid wheels into something useful. First one up was the larger casting, which handily enough had already snapped off its locating spigot. I thought about fretting about the gaps between the spokes, but unfortunately, the moulded spokes don't correspond with each other on both sides of the wheel.

My initial assumption was that there ought to be six spokes on the wheel, and that the toolmakers had got it wrong! I therefore laid out a paper template and worked off that. However - typical, isn't it? - I've since turned up this photo that I took last year of the real thing:

So there are seven, not six.

The approach I took was to drill away a quadrant of the wheel at a time, preserving the hub, add one or two new spokes, allow the glue to set, and then carry on to the next quadrant, gradually replacing all the spokes. I wasn't sure how the resin would hold up, but it turns out that it's easily strong enough to cope with quite a bit of drilling and filing. It took about two hours to do the whole wheel, but it wasn't difficult at all, it just needed to be done slowly to allow time for each spoke to harden in place. I had a yoghurt carton which allowed me to do a six-spoke template very easily, but you could set out as many as you need with a protractor.

For the smaller wheel on the other side of the crane, I took an easier route and just drilled out the space between the spokes. Again this was done with care, but wasn't difficult. The wheel snapped off its spigot easily and was then glued back on once the work was done.

The spokes were white plastikard, and where I'd drilled away the resin, it had turned yellow-ish. So I painted the wheels matte black for the time being although I may come back to them with dark stone or rust.

The next thing is to work out how to rig the crane! It appears that the real one is presently unrigged, so that's no help. The two wheels are offset from the centreline of the jib, so I presume the rope or chain wouldn't go round them. Presumably the main one is just a flywheel, to keep the gear turning smoothly when the crane is being operated.

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