Z scale big hook wreck crane

Hey Fred!

I had to take a winter break as my basement gets to cold to paint and for some reason my wife does not appreciate me using my airbrush in the house.... We are renting but also looking to buy soon so I'll have a 365 day a year workshop to use.... Anyway, the Conrail version with the boom up and outriggers out is painted, decal and finished. The UP version with the boom down, car body is finished. Due to quality issues, I had to re paint the crane upper (Penn Central Green for this period UP MOW). I only use lacquer and enamel based paints which seem to take forever to dry on FUD material. So in a couple of days I'll spray a gloss coat and let that dry for several days and then decal it. After that, dull coat and several days latter it will be dry and then final assembly. To make that long story short, about 2 weeks and hopefully it will be done and I can take some real pictures.

I have to run the final model through Shapeways and print it out to make sure it prints out. They have given me some grief with models that printed out in the past but do not like to print out now. Like the 955 track loader. Single version prints out great. Double the parts tree to sell a set and now all kinds of parts in the tree fails....

I have improved some areas of the kit in CAD that will hopefully make for better assembly and a better model. There are no tow Industrial Brownhoist 250 ton cranes of this model that are exactly alike. But there are 2 different rear doors and window combinations. I will offer both versions.

Thanks,

-Jon

250 ton Industrial Brownhoist crane with the engine rear access door more towards the rear on both sides. This version of crane upper is the more common version. What is seen here is lots of scraping, airbrush primed with Mr. Surfacer 1000 then sanding then more airbrush primed Mr. Surfacer 1000 then more sanding then finally the last airbrushed coat of Mr. surface 1000…. Boom still needs another go around of sanding and priming…. It will either become KCS #05 or a NS crane or another Conrail crane. Haven’t decided which one will be first.

Sorry.... Once again images won't upload or even show up in the attachment even though they are the correct size of 1024x768....

Jon- send pics to Stony- he can fix anything- I too have trouble posting pics sometimes- but I find I'm doing it bassackwards.

I sent out the jpegs to Stony... But I'm scratching my head with this one... Its jpegs and they are saved to exactly 1024x768 in size. Yet when I hit "add file" and select the correct jpeg and hit "open", nothing shows up in the attachment box .... I'm sure its operator error on my side but it's a bit frustrating since I followed all the rules and still does not work... Might be a browser issue. It might also be that I never shut this computer off. Might be time to reset everything by restarting everything...

I have the same issue when I use the version of Firefox on my computer. Everything works fine when I use IE on my computer. It's just an incompatibility issue on my computer. Try a different browser if you have one.

Thanks Thom. Ach! I was afraid that was the case. I hate IE but I have found Firefox also does not work with John Deere's NetMeeting, FTP and Supplier Network... But it does work with Net Meeting with other clients... Go figure.

Anyway... here's the 250 ton Industrial Brownhoist crane with the engine rear access door more towards the rear on both sides for both engines. This version of crane upper is the more common version. What is seen here is lots of scraping, airbrush primed with Mr. Surfacer 1000 then sanding then more airbrush primed Mr. Surfacer 1000 then more sanding then finally the last airbrushed coat of Mr. surface 1000…. Boom still needs another go around of sanding and priming…. It will either become KCS #05 or a NS crane or another Conrail crane. Haven’t decided which one will be first.

This is the UP version that has been redone twice. The Penn Central green came out nice. Its ready for gloss coat and then decals, maybe... I really dont like how the paint job came out on the carbody. I put a dull coat on before realizing I needed a gloss coat for applying decals and then I put a dull coat on top of that when it was all done. Somewhere it was handled to soon and it kind of ruined the finish... So this one might go on E-Bay... But it was a good learning experience....

Heavy-Equipment-Designer wrote: So this one might go on E-Bay...

Hi Jon before putting it on ebay send me a pm I got the perfect spot for it on Donner

Jon,

Fantastic job all around!!! I don't see anything wrong with the paint job on the car body. Remember the one-step back rule.

John

I will PM you. I need to get a new roof as for some reason the rear half of the one I had painted had cracked off... Do you want the boom in the up position? It comes with a key that fits both the boom hoist drum and the hoist drum. Its a bit fragile so I can set it for you if you want. The whip line is attached to the hoist drum right now. It can be set up to use the secondary hoist but that has to be done before I glue in lead BB's on the inside of the top of the boom. So its almost impossible to change it up now.

Thanks John, glad you like it and I appreciate your comments. Your right, it's not noticeable until you take closeup shot with a camera. But it drives me nuts to see it like that when I know I can get a better finish... So I'll give the UP version another try. Conrail version came out pretty good. I'll try to get photo's of that hopefully sooner then later...

Jon, Got anything new? Did you finish your Crane yet? waiting to see completed pictures no one is posting anything new Oh! well! I got two of your Heavy equipment D8 type Bulldozer, 980 wheel loader two each.

Thanks,
Walt

This is an earlier prototype of an Industrial Brownhoist big hook crane I made. There was many issues with this prototype version and the build quality and finish was OK but not so great. It is fully functional. The boom and hoist can be adjusted with a key. Please excuse these overexposed pictures. I had to use a low shutter speed on all of the images to get any details to show up in black color scheme. The rear door setup is incorrect for this Conrail rig(it should be more towards the rear) as I created the CAD geometry for a UP X250 crane built in 1967 that is shown above. Also there should be 3 sets of pulleys on each side. But design constraints for this type of rapid prototyping only allowed me to squeeze in two sets of pulleys on each side.

The actual crane itself had two 6 cylinder diesel engines at 140 hp each and a transfer case with mechanical drive that could propel the crane up to 3 MPH. This 45210 Conrail rig is painted and decaled in the original 1976 color scheme (different then whats seen at the PA museum today). I personally like this original decal scheme a lot better... It was originally built for the Erie Lackawanna back in 1954.

Photo's didn't past to body... Lets try that again.

Jon,
The photo's all look great and the detail also ! great job! those colors would work with the Northfolk & Southern !

Thanks Walt,

That will probably be the next one. I have decals for it. Plus I don't think Conrail is all that popular of a road name for various reasons but I could be wrong on that. I grew up with PC but I have yet to find a picture or any documentation of them using this newer version of Industrial Brownhoist cranes. Only ones I've seen have been older steam to diesel conversion Industrial Brownhoist 250 ton cranes. But again I could be wrong on that to...

Jon I have a lot of ConRails in "N" scale but don't have them set up. Only "Z" scale right now no! room at this time!