American Crane

 About a year ago I picked up a motorized version of Walthers' American Crane model, similar to this one shown here.

Similar, although my model has the Union Pacific logo and reporting marks

I had a non-motorized version earlier, but I've since sold it off via a Facebook group.  This motorized version is DC only, but I had seen YouTube videos of the cranes converted to DCC.

With the DCC conversion in mind, I contacted the good folks at TCS, and they recommended which decoder, with a keep-alive capacitor built in, would fit and work with this model. I figured that given the short wheelbase of the crane, the keep-alive would be really helpful whenever the it would run through track switches on the layout.

Since I have absolutley no idea how to do such electrical work, I prevailed upon Don Janes to do the work for me. I also asked Don to add LED lights to the model.  I asked for two forward facing lights, one rear facing light, and if possible could a light also be added to the end of the crane jib.

A view of the inside of the crane.  Not much room in there as you can see, but there's the TCS decoder and the wiring that Don installed for me.

And here's the crane after Don did all of the work on it. Please disregard the block holding the jib up.  I haven't yet run the cables on the model, so the block is just a temporary measure.

The American Crane sitting outside of the JSSX maintenance building

Two forward facing headlights

Showing the single rear facing light

This model is really not a great runner, but I think it can be improved.  The motor is rather noisy but I can live with that. As Don pointed out to me, much of the problem likely stems from the brass wheels.  They do get dirty pretty fast, and then of course conduct power to the motor quite poorly.

I've sent a note off to NorthWest Shortline asking if they have a wheelset that would be a good replacement for the original brass wheels seen in this photo.

In this view, we can see the two headlights, and the light at the end of the jib as well.

So, I still have to remove the Union Pacific shield, run the cabling for the jib, patch the JSSX reporting marks onto the crane, and of course do some weathering.  I believe that running that cabling is bound to be a frustrating experience, as it sure was on my previous model.

We'll revisit progress on this crane as I get more of that work done.

Thanks Don for all your efforts on my model.  Seriously.