GWR 19

This week, I put a bunch of new equipment into service on Bydemill, my 7mm layout of the Great Western Railway in the Edwardian era. In addition to GWR 1365 (which I wrote about previously), I also finished up the portable crane seen here.

This was an accidental project.

Earlier this year, I wrote about building a 5-Ton Crane for the goods yard. This was actually the second crane I built. The first – a 2-ton model – was part of a package of 7mm stuff I acquired from a friend who was purging some things no longer relevant to his hobby direction. This smaller crane was a Skytrex white metal kit and it built into a lovely model – but I quickly realized it was inappropriate for my goods yard. It just looked too small.

Still, it was a beautiful model and I wanted to find a use for it. I discussed it with my friend Simon Dunkley, and he suggested it would make a good mobile crane – something that could be brought into Bydemill to help load or unload other wagons when needed. (For example, maybe the GWR is delivering treated poles to rebuild the telegraph line?)

I did some reading and learned such a crane could be mounted on a purpose-built wagon, or on a standard, low-sided, wagon such as a one-plank open. I’d already built a one-plank open from a Walsall Model Industries kit – it can be seen next to the coach in the above photo – so I ordered two more and soldered them up assembly-line style.

For the crane wagon, I built up the floor to raise the crane high enough to allow it to swing over the wagon sides. For the second wagon I scratch-built a pair of boxes with hinged lids, based on photos of similar boxes mounted on match trucks (the UK term for what North American railways would call a boom tender).

One thing I wanted to address was a way to keep the crane’s hook from swinging around as the wagon is in motion. Not only would the “kid with a sparkler” effect look unrealistic, it would be dangerous on a full-size railway. I solved the issue by gluing a length of chain into the bed of the match truck, with a loose loop that I can drape through the crane hook when assembling a train in staging. There’s enough slack in the chain that the two cars can negotiate curves and turnouts without issue.

This was a fun project that I didn’t intend to build – but I’m glad I did.