Grand Trunk 25 Ton American Ohio Model E Crane

The Grand Trunk(NEL) had at least one 25 ton locomotive crane that I know of.  It spent most of its time in Island Pond moving coal around.  For my work Train I wanted to include a crane as part of the consist.  So I kit bashed this model using the one and only picture of the crane stationed in Island Pond as reference.  The picture can be found in the John Ames Grand Trunk Trackside book published by Morning Sun.  I believe the prototype to be an American Ohio model E.

The model uses a Walthers 25ton crane for the mechanism and deck.  The rest of the kit is in the trash  bin.  I scratch built the Cab from Sheet styrene.  The Smoke box was made from acrylic turned on my jewellers lathe.  The boom is a brass etching from Custom Finishing Models, and hook is a pewter casting from the same manufacturer.  I made all the pulleys from brass tube and washers.  All the brass parts are soldered.

The big challenge with this project was the windows.  On the prototype they are fine metal bars with glass inserted and have 9 or more panes.   I tried and failed a few times before I came up with a solution I liked.  

I designed the windows in Draftsight and then printed them on overhead transparencies using my laser printer.  This captured the fine look of the mutens on the prototype.

This was a fun project and much different than the endless string of Boxcars I have been working on. Now that the fun is over, its back to more Boxcars!!