craneman

Some slightly odd weathering on that (eg the slewing ring would always be black/steely and shine) but it looks good. The Gorton gang however would not appreciate the grime, 122 was always bulled up (see http://www.bdca.org.uk/gallery/index.php/Ransomes-and-Rapier/ADRR95215-Album/scan0001). Your second photo really highlights what a stunning job Bachmann did representing the slewing clutches and bevel gears, depicted with the postwar Ferodo lining upgrade fitted to some of the class.

Trix, Marklin, Lilliput, and Fleischmann have (I believe) produced fully-operational DCC cranes so far. Expensive, though, my Trix "Goliath" cost me around £1200 new. In terms of detail, quality and price these make the new Bachmann crane a bargain!

Sadly the Netherlands does not have a good reputation where cranes are concerned. Remember this? Completely predictable.

Fair point Mr Gibbo, thank you! Not long ago I had the unenviable of fitting a set off one boiler onto a different boiler, a lot of hard work that was.

I have to say that I am becoming increasingly irritated by the fact that every review I have yet read refers to the holes for the winder knob as "washout plugs". It depresses me that those who purport to present authoritative reviews can demonstrate such a level of ignorance about boilers. I accept that they won't know much about Cochran Hopwood cross-tube boiler, which is unusual, but even a basic knowledge of loco boilers should recognise the difference between a washout plug and a mud hole (they're not mud holes on the crane either). For the record the holes in the boiler are properly known as doors. The higher one is a manhole door and allows access to the water space above the tube nest, the lower one is one of a pair of tube doors (the other is inside the cab) and give access to one end of the tube nest. They weigh a couple of hundredweight each and are seriously awkward to fit - they fit inside the hole so boiler pressure pushes them against the seat, and there's a gasket that has to fit perfectly. In addition each door is hand finished to fit perfectly in a particular orientation in a particular opening in a particular boiler and is therefore unique. It's a good thing Bachmann research's the subject better than the critics!

My preferred supplier received 15 in total last week (no, I don't know why it was 15 not 16 either!) and within the week has sold 12. I get the impression that those who forecast earlier in this thread that Bachmann had overpriced the model out of the market and would be left with a warehouse of unsold cranes will now be keeping very quiet! Something I haven't seen any reviewer do yet is compare the different details between each of the four versions, such as the valve chests, RBs, and job runners. All are different and all are correct for the combination of identity and livery portrayed. You really have to see this model "in the flesh" to appreciate fully just how good it is.

The genius of this coupling is that the crane still looks correct with the RB disconnected, and the RB looks almost correct, and yet the coupling is still both practical and functional. The review in BRM is very positive, even though the reviewer is confused with some of the terminology and history. The review closes with the assessment "This is probably the most detailed and impressive piece of rolling stock we have seen for the UK market and really does push many boundaries. Bachmann is to be congratulated... ", a sentiment with which I have to agree.

No, neither York nor Middlesborough ever had an R&R 45 tonner.

I have an extensive collection of photos of all the 45-tonners, including many of the GWR cranes in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Circa 1960, the ex-GW cranes were all-over black but with the following painted white: Jib head, side plates of load block, side face of rims of crank disks, all raised lettering on all the cast plates (with the exception of the letter "G" in "G W R" wherever it appeared, thus it showed as "W R"), the radius indicator pointers and scale graduations, and the handbrake handwheels. All the photos are monochrome, which makes it difficult to be certain what colour the travelling clutch handwheels and RB loading handwheels were painted, but I believe them to be red for the former (this was normal due to the danger of inadvertent engagement) and either white or possibly yellow for the latter. At that time there would have been no warning stripes on any of them, but these had appeared by 1969. In effect the only real difference between what you have ordered and what you want is that the grey became darker! At some stage during the 1960s the handrails and all footsteps (on crane, RBs and runner) were painted white, but it is not certain exactly when this happened. Note that as I pointed out in a post much earlier in this thread the only R&R crane ever to receive all-over yellow livery was ADRR95213 (ex-GWR 19) which was afflicted thus in the early/mid 1980s whilst at Laira. None of the 45-tonners ever had the prominent GWR branding that the earlier 36-tonners carried pre-nationalisation, and hence their appearance changed less than the latter. Sadly I cannot post any of the photos in question since they have been supplied to me by the copyright holders for personal use only, not for publication. It would certainly appear, and there is ample photographic evidence to support this, that the WR continued to do its own thing as far as painting these cranes was concerned and ignored all directives from head office, thus cranes were repainted piecemeal and there was no general policy of applying wasp stripes, which handrails, etc. The only sure way to get a 100% accurate model is to find a photo of the crane you want on the date you want and use that as the basis of the detail (which as it happens is exactly what has been done with the Bachmann model).

I don't have any photos at present, but will try to remember to take some next time I have a camera in my hand.

I am very pleased to hear that the future is assured for this magnificent model, well down for saving it! I too have the good fortune to own a pair of Steffan's 36-tonners, built to my specific and rather precise instructions to represent Nos 2 and 3 on particular dates and in particular build conditions, for which purpose I supplied Steffan with many photos and details not only of the changes the cranes went through over their long working lives, but also the differences between Nos 2 and 3, which were never identical. I can attest to the fact that they are spectacularly good models, in my opinion completely worth the cost. I do wonder how many of these cranes Steffan actually built.

It looks as though somebody's legs are hanging out of the chimney in the third screenshot! Which video is it, please?

Saltley, Willesden, Longsight, and Crewe, although it is not known if it was painted at Saltley shortly before leaving for Willesden, or painted at Willesden almost immediately on arrival (it was black and at Saltley in 1969, and red and at Willesden by 1977).

It is also a rather crude model (and I think based on fairly old tooling, though I may be wrong on this) and not a patch on the DCC "Goliath" offered some years back by Marklin and Trix. When talking of DCC and cranes, it is also worth bearing in mind, as I pointed out many pages ago in this thread, that any British outline steam breakdown crane is inherently far, far more difficult to motorise than most European and US outline equivalents since no British steam BDC ever had an enclosed cab. All the HO-scale DCC cranes produced to date have had fully-enclosed machinery spaces which allow several motors to be hidden. You simply cannot practically fit the motors you would need (a minimum of two, assuming travel and slew are fitted into the carriage) into the boiler, and even if you could you then have the problem of transferring drive from the motors to the crane motion in a realistic and completely exposed way. The level of detail on the Bachmann crane far eclipses that of the Trix Ardelt crane.

The red crane is RS1097/45 (ex-GWR 17) and the livery is historically accurate for June 1977. It is extremely difficult to say with certainty when cranes were repainted, since no records exist and one has to work off available photographs (most of which are monochrome) but I can say with confidence that this crane was still in its black livery (essentially the same as applied by the GWR after the war) on 1st February 1969. Based on the condition of the paintwork and the degree of weathering in June '77, I would think it was repainted from black to red sometime around 1974. The lined red livery you referred to was the livery carried by the so-called "modernisation plan" 75-ton and 30-ton cranes ordered in November 1959 after the publication of the “Memorandum on Breakdown Cranes for Development Programme” in July 1958 and March 1959. One of the issues which had vexed the "Ad-Hoc Committee", set up in 1953 to investigate ways to improve breakdown working, was that of recruiting staff into breakdown gangs and the maintenance of morale in the gangs, both aspects which had become problematic. The Ad-Hoc Committee's solution to these two issues was to recommend that breakdown cranes and vans should be painted in a distinctive red livery with straw lining, and this was mandated by General Instruction issued in July 1959. The 75- and 30-ton cranes were the only cranes to be delivered from new in this livery. Despite the General Instruction, the repainting of other cranes, which were all black at the time, was undertaken in a piecemeal and unhurried way, and many cranes never received red livery at all, and very few of those repainted received the mandated straw lining. The Western Region, for example, never painted any of its cranes red, because the correct GWR colour for a crane was black and that was the Swindon way! More info on this aspect can be found on the BDCA website, specifically http://bdca.org.uk/modernisation.html

None of the R&R 45-tonners ever carried "lined out red" livery while in service with BR. The two Southern cranes , the Midland (ex-GW) crane, and the two ex-LNER cranes carried plain red for a while, but the only one ever to be lined out in red is S1561 in its current preservation guise at the Swanage Railway.

Excellent photo of the latter day problems of crane operations. The usual approach was to slew the catenary to one side to provide clearance.

That is a question I cannot answer, I am afraid, you'll have to wait until we get a review sample. It is not easy to tell for sure which cranes ever had lifting gear (it is likely that the SR and the LNER did, not the GW) and the lengths of the chimneys also varied from early on. Almost all the cranes that had lifting gear lost it fairly quickly. The only crane which seems to have retained a long chimney with lifting gear for any length of time is the Gorton crane, which is the one modelled in the photo which prompted this discussion. Generally speaking the chimneys were seldom used on the 45-tonners, since they are heavy to lift into position and tend to impair rather than improve the drafting of the boiler (the Gorton crane, which seems to have retained the ridiculous long chimney longer than any other, had its exhaust modified to to provide forced drafting, the only UK breakdown crane ever to be so modified, probably to allow steam generation with the chimney erected). I have just had a trawl though my R&R 45-tonner photo collection of over a hundred photos of the cranes throughout their operating careers, and in only about 2% of those showing them working are the chimneys being used at all. Apart from the Gorton crane, the only photos showing cranes with lifting gear still fitted actually don't have chimneys fitted at all - just the lifting gear. I cannot find a single photo of a crane with lifting gear with the chimney raised, and if fact this has hindered Bachmann's representation of the lifting gear since we simply don't know what it looked like in the "up" position. The lifting gear was used only in conjunction with the original extremely long chimneys (although some cranes retained the gear when the long chimneys were cut down to an intermediate length), never with the short ones. It is probably therefore more accurate to pose your model with the chimney down than up. It should be understood that it really was very rare indeed for the chimneys on these cranes to be used at all, they don't really do anything useful, and the boiler steams better without them. They are also heavy and awkward to raise (without the lifting gear you have to climb on the cab roof and heave them into position, and it is both difficult and dangerous). I have never bothered with this aggro when operating a 45-tonner (and the back of you neck still gets filthy when driving one whether the chimney is up or down).

They are representations of the chimney lifting gear fitted to the Southern and LNER versions of the crane, but they only really make sense as moulded with the chimney in the dropped (running) position. In the photo, the man with the knob has clearly flipped the chimney up to allow the winding knob to be inserted, hence the strange attitude of the lifting gear.

Yes, that would appear to be the Gorton crane.

Not in the grey era (at least there's no evidence of it). Later, in the black and later red eras, it did.

Cracking photos, thanks for posting them. The quality of the model far exceeds the awareness of the people who pose the models for display. You wouldn't last long as a driver if you ran the hook block into the jib-head sheaves like that. But at least the jib runner is the right way round this time!

^^^ Craven Bros. 35-ton crane built in 1914 for the Great Northern, originally numbered 343A. Withdrawn from Banbury in April 1966 and scrapped. Recorded allocations: King's Cross (1914), Doncaster Carr Loco (1914), New England (1927), Woodford Halse (1940), transferred to LM Region 1961 as RS1096/35, Banbury (1965). Note the herringbone spur gear (directly in front of the scrapper's right foot), a classic characteristic of a Craven crane. Very expensive to manufacture, and very rarely found on any other make.

Yes, the spring is there because the jib is not intrinsically heavy enough to keep the rigging tight.The prototype doesn't have this particular problem!

It is quite possible that the tank was fitted whilst the crane was still black, but I am not aware of any hard evidence either way. Unfortunately we don't know for sure either when the tank was fitted or when the crane received the red livery at present. It is even possible that the tank was fitted at the same time as the crane was painted. I have attached some crudely annotated photos which show the locations of the various parts under discussion. I suspect that the pipe you mention (from the lower front tank washout/inspection cover to the duplex pump) is the deliver pipe from the pump into the tank, but since this fitting is unique and totally non-standard I'd have to inspect the crane to say for certain. I believe that the duplex pump has a quick-release fitting for a suction hose in a similar fashion to the standard water lifter. The method of operation would be that when the crane is working, water is being drawn by either the injector or the banjo feed pump and supplied to the boiler from the upper tanks (on the rotating crab) and not from the carriage tank or other external source. When the upper tanks are getting low, then the suction hose would be attached to the water lifter (or, in the unique case of RS1083, the horizontal duplex pump) and the upper tank would be replenished. It would not be normal for the crane to be operating while this happens. When the tank is full, the suction hose is removed and operation of the crane resumes. Unfortunately I don't seem to have a photo of this operation in progress (usually my hands are too filthy by this time to use a camera)! It is clear from photographic evidence that the horizontal duplex pump on RS1083 was originally fitted whilst the crane was at Gorton (in the lined black era) in a different location, it was in the cabside opening directly ahead of the banjo pump, and again it is not known when it was moved to its current location. It would have made it exceptionally difficult to get in or out of the right-hand side of the cab in its original location (it isn't easy at the best of times)! Remember that the banjo pump and the injector (and there is only a single injector on these cranes) are boiler feed devices. The water lifter, and on RS1083 only, the horizontal duplex pump, are tank filling devices. I am not sure exactly what you mean by "...how the vacuum travelled between the vehicle..." (if you mean the vacuum brakes, the crane, relieving bogies and jib runner were generally all through-piped, at least later in life, with standard vac hose couplers).