Before and After photos of the latest project on my layout, the Trenton Subdivision in N Scale rehabing this old heavy lift crane. Read on for details.

I picked up this old crane several years ago at a Model Train Show for a couple of bucks. It was obviously broken, as the entire mechanism for lifting had been glued down, including the lower pulley system. with the bright red cabling it was a "Wreck of a Wrecker!"

As one of my pandemic projects, I decided to tear the crane apart and see if I could get it working once again.

 Using a sharp chisel point knife I removed all the glued mechanism. Sadly I was only able to save the large drum. The one side wall of the housing broke off in the process and I was able to re-glue the base together and sand off the remaining old glue. The smaller drum and the support for the lower pulleys were replaced with 3.2mm polystyrene rod. I drilled two small holes for the pulley arm to be attached and glued. Then pinned the new mechanisms in place with 1.19mm brass rod.

Next came the search for a prototype crane to model. i primarily model the Canadian National Railroad and found several photos of heavy lift cranes on RailroadPictures.net, no two cranes were the same and none were a match of the style of crane I had. Additionally, I was unable to find a decal set for a CN crane. 

This was going to be my most challenging build to date. The similarities in the prototype photos were the CN red for the primary colour of the crane and CN Yellow for the carriage with the alternating black/white safety striping. The marking were an assortment of large/small CN logos, numbers and identifiers, all placed in a variety of locations. It appeared each crane was customized by the individual operator. On the surface, this would seem frustrating to build a prototype, but then I realized it gives me quite a bit of latitude for customizing.

 Replicating the safety stripes was interesting, I had not done this type of detailed painting before. I started by marking off the entire striped area, masking the edges at a 45 degree angle on the sides, airbrushing the area white. I then masked off the white stripes on the two side walls with Tamiya 3mm tape and airbrushed the black stripes. Once dry, I removed the masking on the sidewalls and repeated the process on the rear of the crane, using the black/white stripes on the side as my guides to mask the rear.

I used a silver sharpie marker to cover over the rear vent grill and outline the inside of the windows, which I had glassed with clear plastic.

Several left over decal sets were used for the markings, including CN MOW decals for logo/safety strips and VIA Rail Gold and Blue coaches for numbers.  

I am very pleased with the finished project and look forward to creating some interesting scenes on my layout. As you can see from the photo below, not only has my modeling skill improved, so has my photography skills. This was a photo from my first blog post on Model Railroad Hobbyist in 2014, Laying the Last Piece of Track -Trenton Subdivision in N Scale,