The Toplis Level Luffing Crane- a mathematical quandary

[Pacific231G]

So, if the Patent for the luffing crane was applied for in 1912, what was around before then?

 

Is there still a model life for the Airfix/Dapol dockside crane on Pre WW1 layouts?

I think high speed level luffing came with the serious development of electric cranes. Before that steam, and in busier ports hydraulic, cranes as well as hand operated cranes were the norm. Travelling steam cranes usually ran on standard gauge track rather than the portal type on widely spread rails that could straddle a line of wagons. A lot more general cargo handling was also carried out by the ship's own derricks though they continued to play a role and still do.

 

This postcard, from the collection of a French aquaintance, shows a self propelled steam crane in action on the quayside in Dieppe sometime between 1900 and 1910 when it was posted.

 

Similar machines were also used in Britain and they continued in use for a suprisingly long time. There were some good examples belonging to the GWR on Weymouth quay. Note the chains with screw links at the four corners of the chassis to stop the crane from toppling.

 

In this postcard view from my own collection you can see that while two modern electric horse head level luffing cranes had been installed with Dieppe's new passenger ferry terminal in the 1950s, four of the steam cranes on their own track were still working the cargo ferries that ran their own service to Newhaven and went on doing so until the early 1960s when two more of the same electric cranes were installed. 

I can also remember seeing crane engines that ran on ordnary tracks still in use in shipyards in the 1960s.

 

I assume the Airfix crane must have had a prototype and level luffing cranes were by no means universal, but I don't recall ever seeing a crane of that type mounted on a travelling portal on rails.Maybe it worked in a scrapyard or somewhere and I notice that Dapol now call it a travelling crane rather than a dockside crane. Pre WW1 an electric travelling crane would have been very modern but they did exist

 

There's a good section on quayside crames in Mike Smith's website about railway goods. http://mike.da2c.org/igg/rail/12-linind/dock-ch.htm

Edited November 19, 2015 by Pacific231G

[Pacific231G]

On 17/11/2015 at 20:52, Andy Hayter said:

So, if the Patent for the luffing crane was applied for in 1912, what was around before then?

 

Is there still a model life for the Airfix/Dapol dockside crane on Pre WW1 layouts?

Hi Andy

 

I've been doing a bit more delving and found this postcard from the 1930s of a crane at Calais that looks rather more like the Airfix type.

 

It's not very typical though and the rather heavier crane behind it looks more typical.

 

In the actual port they also had these cranes and from the sailing vessels behind these would be quite early

Though larger these seem to have a similar jib arrangement to the Airfix model though these are grab cranes. With these I think there are two cables with relative movement between them opening and shuitting the grab. It would be hard to do that if both cables had to be reeved over four pulleys. and in any case a grab crane would probably have less need for level luffing. 

Edited February 11, 2021 by Pacific231G

[D9020 Nimbus]

I remember an article by Cyril Freezer a long time ago in which he reckoned that the Airfix crane was misleadingly named; as he'd worked in the docks, he would certainly know. Can't remember what sort of crane the Airfix one actually was, though.

[PatB]

In a previous life I used to buy bulk sand from a company based at Poole's Wharf in Hotwells, Bristol. The sand was unloaded from dredgers (the Sand Diamond, Sand Sapphire, Sand Princess and  the Harry Brown) at the wharf by, IIRC, a classic Stothert and Pitt dockside crane fitted with a grab type bucket. Whether the level luffing was still operative I have no idea though, and, besides, my increasingly unreliable memory may be playing tricks.

[Pacific231G]

In a previous life I used to buy bulk sand from a company based at Poole's Wharf in Hotwells, Bristol. The sand was unloaded from dredgers (the Sand Diamond, Sand Sapphire, Sand Princess and  the Harry Brown) at the wharf by, IIRC, a classic Stothert and Pitt dockside crane fitted with a grab type bucket. Whether the level luffing was still operative I have no idea though, and, besides, my increasingly unreliable memory may be playing tricks.

Hi Pat

I've found a couple of photos including the crane. This is the clearer one https://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/2056673243/  and the ship is the Harry Brown. This shows the whole scene but it's not clear enough to see the rigging. http://www.b-i-a-s.org.uk/images/tambling_Pools_Wharf_Bristol_harry_brown_Arco.jpg

Difficult to be sure how it's rigged but it certainly looks like a bog standard S&P level luffing crane with a counterweighted jib and a usefully small one at that. With the toplis riigng there is usually only one lifting cable between the hook and the jib end pulley. There are two cables here but you'd need a second one to open and close the grab. It looks like there could be six lines between the two sets of pulleys so its possible that both lines follow the same reaves which would make it level luffing but that does seem like a lot of rigging. There would be no particular advantage in level luffing for the actual handling of this type of cargo but, because the load doesn't rise and fall when the jib is luffed, the luffing mechanism requires far less power so can be a crank lever rather than a luffing drum. 

Edited November 21, 2015 by Pacific231G

[PatB]

Hi Pat

I've found a couple of photos including the crane. This is the clearer one https://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/2056673243/  and the ship is the Harry Brown. This shows the whole scene but it's not clear enough to see the rigging. http://www.b-i-a-s.org.uk/images/tambling_Pools_Wharf_Bristol_harry_brown_Arco.jpg

Difficult to be sure how it's rigged but it certainly looks like a bog standard S&P level luffing crane with a counterweighted jib and a usefully small one at that. With the toplis riigng there is usually only one lifting cable between the hook and the jib end pulley. There are two cables here but you'd need a second one to open and close the grab. It looks like there could be six lines between the two sets of pulleys so its possible that both lines follow the same reaves which would make it level luffing but that does seem like a lot of rigging. There would be no particular advantage in level luffing for the actual handling of this type of cargo but, because the load doesn't rise and fall when the jib is luffed, the luffing mechanism requires far less power so can be a crank lever rather than a luffing drum. 

 

Well  well. Yes, that's the place. When I first started going there in 1988 the crane, dredgers and the bulk silos were all still in use. However, by the time I stopped in 1996 things had changed somewhat with larger dredgers in use, possibly with their own unloading gear as the crane appeared to have become redundant. The bulk bins fell out of use, presumably round about the same time (I remember it happening, just not when). At some point during that period the Harry Brown suffered a collision with the Glen Avon sewage ship and, forever afterwards, always seemed to list at a jaunty angle. The last I heard she'd been condemned but had done a runner to Ireland.

 

Funny to think it was all so long ago now.

[Lady_Ava_Hay]

I resurrected this topic as I was idly sitting in a restaurant at Gunwharf Quay in Portsmouth and this purely cosmetic dockyard crane caught my attention.

 

How does the jib move? Those ties are rigid and the tower the jib is attached you doesn't appear to be a movable item.

 

Edited May 14, 2016 by Lady_Ava_Hay

[unravelled]

My first guess is that the cabling and  sheaves for lowering the jib have been removed and replaced by fixed chains(?) for simplicity of maintenance. A quick image search for dock crane shows this sort of arrangement in similar working cranes. If I find a better picture I will post it, but this is what I mean,

 

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/old-dock-cranes-13364215.jpg

 

Dave

[Pacific231G]

I resurrected this topic as I was idly sitting in a restaurant at Gunwharf Quay in Portsmouth and this purely cosmetic dockyard crane caught my attention.

 

How does the jib move? Those ties are rigid and the tower the jib is attached you doesn't appear to be a movable item.

 

IMAG0215.jpg

It does, as Dave says, appear to have been fixed in position and though the sheaving could be that for a Toplis level luffing with three runs between the tower and the jib head and a single fall to the hook. there should also be a set of cables to luff the jib as this doesnt appear to have been counterweighted. That was a common feature of Stothert and Pitt dockside cranes so that, instead of a winding drum to raise and lower the jib, the mechanism was a crank acting directly on the jib (not for nothing is the dockside crane in Awdry's railway books called "Cranky"). but that doesn't appear to have been the case here. It's possible that the luffing cables have simply been removed  

[Pacific231G]

For anyone who is still interested in this I've found a Toplis Level Luffing Crane Simulator here

https://github.com/gillesveyet/toplis#readme

 

Gilles Veyet is a member of the French Club des Amis du Meccano* who works in Lyon but I've not yet made cotact with him.  I think he's used a commercial package used for more complex problems.

Interestingly, his references start with this topic in RMweb though if you Google Toplis level luffing it appears very

For a standard dockside crane with a single fall- the most common type used for general cargo working and built in vast numbers by Stothert and Pitt- you need to set Nb ropes CD to 3 and Nb ropes BM to 1. However, Claude Toplis' 1912 patent application also covered other options with multiple falls (with sheaves above the hook for handling heavier loads) and with this simulator you can try them out. Hint, the relative height of the tower above the jib's pivot point  DE and the jib length OB needs to be altered depending on the number of sheaves. 

What this seems to show is that there isn't a trigonometric  solution that keeps the hook at exaccly the same level but the principle can only be analysed numerically. I suspect though that Claude Toplis (or his team at S&P where he was the Chief Engineer) came upon the principle experimentally rather than mathematically.

I still can't understand why the principle behind the Toplis level luffing system wasn't well known to every Bosun since  Sinbad's as it's a fairly simple arrangement - perhaps it was and the other crane manufacturers had simply missed it

 

*I've long felt that Britain's decline as an industrial/manufacturing nation that thought it could live off handling money alone was exemplified by the fact that Meccano was produced in France (and AFAIK still is) long after it ceased in Binns Road

Edited September 25, 2022 by Pacific231G

[Artless Bodger]

A bit late to the party, but have been doing some delving into my collection of drawings and photos of the Reed's Aylesford Paper Mills. We had one Topliss crane during my time there, it was removed in that period when we stopped using china clay, its last job was to unload the couple of 5 plank wagons of clay a week we recieved. Prior to my time, when East Mill boiler house was still operating there were two such cranes, unloading coal from either lighters on the Medway or railway wagons as required - just visible in the attached photo. Rail borne coal came from the Kent pits mainly I believe.

Initially the east mill wharf was equiped with a conventional dockside portal crane, not unlike the Airfix one, but with a protruding cab - see the drawing section (a composite, it is an updated version of an original of the late 1930s when no 6 papermachine was installed), which also shows one Topliss crane. The 'Airfix' type crane is just visible in the photo of the mill fire brigade practising.

 

 

 

 

[Artless Bodger]

The 'Airfix' style crane is shown unloading china clay from a coaster at around 16 minutes into the film "Mill By The Medway", immediately after, one of West Mill's Topliss cranes unloading coal from wagons. Circa 1954.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dHWnJTfr6U

 

[Barry Ten]

On 17/11/2015 at 14:38, PatB said:

 

One of my few claims to fame is that one of my 1st year Physics courses was delivered by Professor "Rocky" Runcorn who was, I am led to believe, one of the main drivers of plate tectonics .

 

Completely missed this thread when it was being posted to in 2015, but I was also taught 1st year physics by (S) Keith Runcorn, about ten years before his murder.

 

At least I know what a luffing crane is now.