Barchester

After a friend treated me to a Slaters plastic kit of a hand operated lifting crane and I had assembled the model and placed it on the jetty at Barchester's Sand & Gravel canal basin I liked it enough to think that I could make more or less the same thing from card. So after a bit of thought and half an hour with paper and pencil I came up with this effort. It isn't a scale model of any particular prototype but it is typical of the kind of thing needed in Barchester's Goods Yard and the timber yard.

In this first photograph you can see a partially assembled model and all the bits and pieces laid out to produce the second identical crane. Apart from the short lengths of kebab stick all you see is cut from card. The round pulley in the foreground is produced by sticking together several thin card punchings from a punch machine. That's the little machine that punches the holes in paper for fitting into ring binders.










There is very little to say about the construction of this model as it is pretty obvious from the photograph how it all goes together. Should anyone want to make this kind of thing and need any help at all then please don't hesitate to contact me.

Here we have the almost completed model under test on the workbench to see if it looks OK with a load attached. It is possible to see here where the short lengths of kebab stick are fitted, acting as the rollers for the cable. The large flywheel is a coat button of suitable size and the whole machine has been painted in suitable colours and then 'weathered'. The flywheel is because, unlike the Slaters model, this is not a hand operated crane but is powered by a small engine at the base of the crane. Initially the flywheel is turned by hand to kick start the engine. This system enables the crane to lift heavier loads but to be independent of power supplies.








These last two photographs show the new cranes in their final positions, one in the goods yard and the other in the timber yard. Unfortunately the crane shown in the timber yard has nothing to drop it's load in to as I haven't got round to making the barges for the canal basins yet. Not to worry though as the barges are already on the drawing board.