Kit-Bashing an old kit.

Following on from Gormo's superb thread regarding his breakdown crane, I thought I would do one of my own.  Firstly, I must give credit to Robert Stevens who published an excellent article on modifying the Dapol (ex-Airfix) kit in the May 2007 issue of Model Rail magazine.  Secondly, this has been a rather slow moving build and will not be a blow by blow account, rather some photographs of the build as it proceeds.

This is what the finished model kit, as unmodified, is supposed to look like…




As you can see, the model represents a type of crane with two bogies.  Our intended model seeks to represent one of a number of cranes supplied to the Western Region of BR by Clyde Crane & Booth Ltd.  This type of crane had a rigid eight-wheeled chassis, so a new chassis is required to be made from styrene sheet with whitemetal castings for the axle-boxes.  The jacks from the original kit are cemented to the chassis sides.  Also, on the original model the cab is positioned too far back and needs to be brought forward.  To achieve this it is necessary to cut the floor into three pieces and re-arrange them in three-card trick fashion, and re-cement them together so that the pivot is located nearer to the end of the chassis where the match truck will be.  The metal wheels from the kit are used.  If you were building an original Airfix kit you might consider replacing the kit's plastic wheels.  A coat of Halford's Primer followed by a coat of black paint and it looks like this…







Terry

On our way indeed Terry,

You have a tricky build in front of you there methinks. I look forward to watching your progress with the modifications. It sounds like it will be an interesting model.

 Good luck with it all.

:cheers  Gormo

Nice one, I will be looking forward to the next instalment, although my preferred scale is O, I still work in OO for my local club so you may see another crane build in the future!
Pete.   

It looks a mess but, as they say, it's a work in progress.

Terry

I did one some time ago and instead of the bogies I replaced the chassis with the underframe of an old Mainline LMS tender. I still have it somewhere so when I find it I'll post a couple of pics. For your mod could you use and old Hornby A4 or A3 tender chassis??

Lookin`Good Terry,

I like your jib rest…..it really looks the business and the crane is coming along nicely. Does the cab have free movement when pivoting on it`s bearing on the base of the crane. That was one area where I had trouble with my crane. The cab needs to be able to rotate with the lightest of pressure exerted by the jib rest when negotiating a curve. I thought I would mention it now because I didn`t realize it with my crane until all was put back together for test runs. The test runs showed the lack off free movement caused the Match truck to derail.

:cheers  Gormo

Inspirational stuff, Terry. 

I have the Dapol crane kit in my collection with the same sort of conversion in mind. I have been keeping an eye out for a spare A3 or A4 tender chassis to use for the base.

I like what you did with the bolser wagon and crane jib rest. For another crane variation using a kit-built 6-wheeler, I adapted an LNER plate wagon as the runner wagon, but I think that would be too short for the Dapol crane.

Keep up the good work, Terry. You (and Gormo) may well end up with a few imitators here! :)

Hi SRman.
If your interested I have about 4 of the A3/A4 chassis in the spare box. You are welcome to one. PM me an address and I'll pop it in the post.

Thanks all.

Gormo.  Worth bearing in mind, thank you.

SRMan. On the prototypes of this crane, bogie bolster wagons were used for the match wagon.

Terry

Thanks for the info, Terry.
Special thanks to 60019Bittern, too, as he is now sending me a suitable tender chassis. I'll have no excuses for not doing this conversion soon!

Watching with interest, I built one of the Dapol kits as it came a couple of years ago, I have another one waiting for conversion having since found out that the Airfix/Dapol kit is not really correct.

Interstingly the diagram book near the bottom of the page in the link below for cranes does appear to show some that are on twin bogies

http://www.barrowmoremrg.co.uk/Prototype.html

i used a hornby A3 tender chassis  on my crane not 100% but near enough

That looks great, cobach.
I still haven't done mine. I am looking at ways to put finer wheels and axles while still allowing sufficient sideplay for 2nd radius curves.