Best Of Scratchbuilding a Container crane, Finished incl. night shot

[engineshop]

I also worked on the stairs. According to the picture I have of this modern Kalmar crane, it does not show any stairs and only an elevator. But I just love those Zig-Zag stairs and could not resist to build them.





Oh, did I mention, that they have lights so the operater does not have to walk up in the dark.

[nscalesteve]

Roland, du spinnsch !   

that looks great man...  ;D ;D

[wendell camp]

Roland now that you have the stairs on it really shows how big it  is  WOW Wendell

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Yeah, I'm with Wendell.

The true scale of that thing really just sunk in when I saw the staris.

Wow. REALLY awesome man. Really awesome.

[SAH]

Wow.  I know container cranes are big but as the others said, it didn't dawn on my how big the model is until the stairs were added.  Regarding the stairs and platforms - any chance you could post a close up photo?  I'm interested in how you built them! 

PS - My new wire bending pliers arrived while I was away.  I can already see they will make the task MUCH easier than it was with my old broken down tools.  Thanks for the tip.   

Steve

[engineshop]

Thanks for the comments.

The crane will be around 16 inches high and the entire boom length is around 21. Remember that is 1:200 only.

Steve
The stairs are made out of Plastruct stairs (#90441) and photo etched parts. The handrails are from GPM, a Polish company that makes photo etched parts for 1:200 scale ships. I bought them from Hobbyfactory.com. They are really thin, much thinner than Gold Medal and you get around 38 inches of railing for around $7. Unfortunately they bend easily around my clumsy fingers and that is the reason, I have not attached them yet. It will be the last step before the pieces go to the paint booth.
The platforms are diamond shaped mesh. I bought a whole bunch of them on e-bay very cheap. I don't know the manufacture, it just says: SSM-11, special shape. I used Plastruct L shaped ABS profiles for the perimeter of the platform and T shaped profiles for the in-between pieces.

Sorry for the quality.





I made some progress and the wiring. I got a small 9V round battery that I put in the Machine House. For the blinking lights, I recycled blink circuit boards that I got off a computer displays years ago. I used four boards instead of only one, so that I get blinking lights that are not synchronized at all. Each one has a different speed because of the tolerance the chip set comes with.



The switches for the lights/blinkers are attached to the bottom of the smaller building.
The roof sits only on top of the Machine House, so I can change the battery easily. It should last a long time since I only use 20mA LEDs.

[SAH]

The crane will be around 16 inches high and the entire boom length is around 21. Remember that is 1:200 only. . . . . .

Steve
The stairs are made out of Plastruct stairs (#90441) and photo etched parts. The handrails are from GPM, a Polish company that makes photo etched parts for 1:200 scale ships.

Thanks Roland.  I'll have to keep the 1:200 stuff in mind for when I build my steel mill layout some day.  (If I live that long  :)  The crane is going to be a VERY impressive model.  Keep up the good work!

Steve

[engineshop]

I finished the back boom with all the railings.



The more challenging part were the maintenance platforms on the round pillars going up to the top of the crane. There is not much surface to get them level in all directions and I have to live with the fact it would not get final approval by the harbor company.



Lights and blinkers are hooked up and work.



(it took me 20 tries until I got one of the red blinkers in the picture)

[Chris333]

That thing is just crazy! 

Lots of N scale feet will be sore after getting to the top!

[engineshop]

I have not posted any progress pictures for a while since I started doing the little detail parts.

First up is the trolley and crane cabin. Eventually the cabin will be glued underneath the trolley after I painted it and installed the windows and the operator.



I did not have any pictures of the arrangement of the rollers and motors of the trolley, only a picture from the underside. The only picture I could find was a stacker that picks up the containers after the crane dropped it off. I assume there is not much difference in the arrangement of the motors and rollers since those two vehicles work in the same way.




The spreader is the last piece I still have to work on. I still have to add some minor details and the rollers casing than lift and lower the spreader.





I finished the wheels that let the crane travel alongside the dock. I could not find any pictures of my Kalmar crane that would show the wheels and so I used a different manufacture.
One side will run on tracks while the other side will "fake it". I assume it would be tough to line up both tracks very nicely without having rolling issues.



I still have to add some minor pieces on the crane itself but soon have to make the decision if I want to assemble the entire crane and paint it or paint the three major pieces and than assemble and hope that I don't ruin the paint while soldering the wires for the light and blinkers and gluing parts together.

[SquirrelHollow]

Awesome work.

That's a big, intimidating project and your attention to detail shows the whole way through.

[tehachapifan]

Wow! Really excellent work!!

Somehow I missed this entire thread until now.

After seeing this, I think I will have to throw my still-unfinished gantry crane away! :-[

Russ

[engineshop]

Tehachapifan
Since the harbor is my main part of the layout and the crane will be right in front, I needed to get a little overboard.
I would have never put so much detail in it, if it would have been a backdrop structure.
Of course I never mention the fact, that everything worked out at the first try and that is a first for me.
I used a lot of ideas I found on this forum and studied every scratchbuilding topic I could find and tried every tool mention by so many forum members. It also helped that the structure is fairly big and I worked on the small items last, after months of building.

[tehachapifan]

I know what you mean about months of buiding. I've had an N scale port scene in the same (unfinished) state for a couple of years now. : Your crane, although MUCH nicer than mine, has at least got me looking at mine again.

I think I may need to add lighting like you did and I also like the wheels you built (I have been trying to come up with something that looks correct and may even roll along a set of rails).

I thought you might enjoy a couple of pics of my crane:

Control cab. Thumbturns for gripper cable barely visible. These will allow me to periodically raise or lower the gripper to change the scene every now and then....



Gripper. There's a magnet inside the container and the bottom plate of the gripper is metal. Only the corners if the container are in contact with the gripper. The gripper can also be adjusted down for 20' containers.



Russ

[engineshop]

Russ
thanks for the pictures. Your crane looks good to me. The only difference to mine is some stairs, walkways and hand railings. The really give the model that special look.
I really like your operator cabin. I still have a hart time to cut windows in styrene so that they don't look like crap.

I was thinking about a hand crank for the cables to the container spreader. My first drawings were like that until a found a picture of that see through trolley which I really liked. Looks was more important than working parts.

For lights I use SMD LEDs that I got from Jameco.com

http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&pa=334756&productId=334756

They are a little bit bigger than other SMD but they can take more heat and I am not really good with the soldering iron. I have not melded one even though I had to do some twice. Also the bigger size make them easier to glue to the styrene. I like those little LEDs since I have about 30 SMD LEDs including blinking ones on a single 9V battery (The round kind not the the smoke detector one).
I also can use really thin wires, like the one Digitrax uses for the decoders since there is not much amps going to the LEDs.

The wheels are a mixture of many pictures I found on the internet, starting with this one from the Kalmar web site.

http://217.197.57.148:8080/webnative/getimage?-web+/disk1_1/pcjobb/Kalmar%20Pressmaterial/01%20Kalmar%20pressrealease%20picture/%20%20%202005/050110_MSC_2005_01_06.jpg