At roughly this point in proceedings, with me struggling to nail the design down, a combination of extreme tiredness, stress, booze, and too long spent looking at books full of Victorian machinery led to the inevitable nightmare. A genuine nightmare in fact. I’ll spare the details, as I doubt any psychiatrists are reading but, sufficed to say I was walking along a derelict railway line at dusk, beside an estuary (which was, in hindsight, the river which empties out at Penrhydeudraeth, Wales. Took me a long time to realise that, it annoyed me for days, but I digress).
Beside the estuary were some old, abandoned slate wharves where slate from the quarries, transported by train, would be put onto boats, and for some reason, in amongst this mass of overgrown sidings, there was a huge, rusty, battered railway-mounted breakdown crane. It was black with white and yellow detailing, with two silvery-coloured searchlights mounted on it. As I walked towards it, it started to slowly trundle forward, the searchlight ’eyes’ watching me, as the crane (or neck rather) was turning towards me. I walked past it, trying not to look at it, and it started to shuffle slowly backwards, keeping pace. I can even remember details like it creaking, and whisps of steam emerging from it.
Now I’m not going to try and analyse the dream, because from my hazy recollection of Freud, pretty much any dream actually just equals repressed sexual lust for a close relative or pet. And I’m aware that there is no derelict railway or abandoned crane at the real location. But waking up with such a clear memory of it, did give me a bit of a breakthrough with the project. There is something remarkably animal, or rather dinosaur-like about the basic crane when the jib is lifted. I can even picture the inspiration for the crane in the dream, the Hornby 00 gauge breakdown crane in fact.
So I dug out a picture of the one I had when I was younger (the actual model is boxed up somewhere at my parents house, because why horde your old possessions only in your own home when you can inconvenience other people), and figuring it would be a good starting point for a conversion, bought off eBay the rather more Victorian-looking, older Hornby Dublo crane, a very battered example got at a bargain price. Further prototype information was handily on the doorstep, almost literally, in that a breakdown crane is parked up in the sidings of the Vintage Carriages Trust at Ingrow Station.
OK, this isn't the breakdown crane, but this older yard crane is opposite it, and of interest.
The actual crane in question is an old Craven Ltd. product.
Note the animal/dinosaur-like head.
Supporting jacks... like feet?
This provided some more useful details, not least the ragged tarpaulins draped all over it, which could feasibly be tattered ‘flesh’.
It didn’t quite fit the bill however, given I had a powerful urge to build something as close as possible to the crane I’d had the nightmare about, the above sketch being completed in the early hours of the morning after, and with the effects of a steadying glass of vodka.
So out came some of the old toy O gauge trains from the stash of old projects, and I set to work with a hacksaw…
The basic chassis were built up from MDF and mountboard on the waggon bases...
To make the crane rotate, I chopped up one of the already somewhat-battered ex-Britannia Model Village tanks.
And speaking of Britannia, the body of the crane would be assembled from the remains of the CCTV truck, which had in turn started life as a toy ambulance.
The crane jib would be made from an unlikely combination of cheapie Wii-controller and Airfix pontoon bridge parts.
Other details were card, model kit bits, basically anything that looked vaguely 'right'.
It is very top-heavy, but it does capture the look I wanted.
The set for the photographs, unsurprisingly, was based on the nightmare of the crane monster, and so the photographs are as close to the nightmare as I could make it.
PROS
Well, it showed me the direction the project needed to proceed in anyway, the crane angle being a perfect way of showing a monster with a long, overarching, slender neck, with a definite ‘head’ to it too.
CONS
A rail mounted breakdown crane is a pretty massive thing, and this design I’ve done was far too modern, albeit realistically steam powered. It will come in useful for a future project however. In the meantime, I needed to explore the crane angle further...
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