Build a bucket coal loader
These three views show the finished coal loader with the bracing in place and mounted on its styrene base. Note the air hoist
painted the crane with Floquil Founda- tion and detailed it with Floquil Weath- ered Black, I added several rungs up the length of the angled boom support. The Belfast crane photos mostly show this “ladder” on the vertical support, but with the hoist on the model, that space was taken and I have found other pho- tos with these on the angled pieces of similar cranes.
The third addition I made to the crane was to insert an air hose into the base of the hoist. This is where I “fanta- sized” a bit. I supposed that an air con- nection from the locomotive being coaled to the hoist itself would allow the crew to raise and lower the buckets. So, I cut a length of very thin rubber tubing to a scale length of about twelve feet. I inserted an air hose casting into each end and then painted the whole con- traption Grimy Black with the levers and hose connections touched up with a silver Sharpie®
pen. I glued this fixture
onto the base timber in a position where it could logically be accessed by the crew. After adding a cable of thread with a hook secured to it, I slipped the crane into position by slightly flexing the top support, and moved on to add the coal piles and details. For the base of the coal pile, I carved a piece of foam to shape and when I was satisfied with the contours, I glued it in place with Liquid Nails®
. I made a
slight indentation where I was going to insert a shovel, painted the pile with Polly Scale Grimy Black and while the paint was still wet, sprinkled on the
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added to the back of the crane, the wooden steps on the angled boom support and the air hose laying at the base of the crane.
first layer of coal. By the way, for coal, both in HO and O scales, I have a large bag of the real stuff that I “rescued” from the site of a Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes “incident” in Phillips, Maine in July of 1916. I simply break pieces up and crush them to the proper size for each scale. After the first layer was set, I added more coal to fill in gaps around the supports and such and used Woodland Scenics liquid scenic cement to secure it all in place. For de- tails, I added three figures, one of which was an old Weston hobo taking a break on a cast-off station bench, a cou- ple of Durango Press buckets, a wheel
barrow and cart and a few shovels and brooms; almost anything would work here, but make sure everything is well soiled and weathered. This was a simple model to construct,
made even easier because I had some of the basics already in hand. The me- chanics of the project may not be totally accurate, but the finished model is a good example of having a prototype in- spiration and being able to come up with a product that fits a modeling need or desire more or less correctly. The loco- motives on my still to be built HOn3 switching layout now have a way to get coal, and they’ll stay busy.
NOVEMBER 2013
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