Lionel Gantry Crane Track

Lew:

You can mate our track to the FasTrack with the following,

1 #6-12040 Fastrack to O Gauge Tubular and our #801 O Gauge Mating Pins.

You will need to pull the Lionel pins out and replace with ours. There will be a height difference of about 3/16". Cork roadbed works well to raise our track to the proper height.

Mike

I went with the Gargraves with Lionel Tubular track with the correct mating Pins and it works Great.

Mikey

GarGraves posted:

Lew:

You can mate our track to the FasTrack with the following,

1 #6-12040 Fastrack to O Gauge Tubular and our #801 O Gauge Mating Pins.

You will need to pull the Lionel pins out and replace with ours. There will be a height difference of about 3/16". Cork roadbed works well to raise our track to the proper height.

Mike

 

Thanks, Mike. Once I have the Gantry Crane I'll see if I have enough space to do it as you suggest.

And have bookmarked your online store. Tnx.

Lew

Ross also sells gantry track.  I bought their gantry track and ross roadbed.  While Ross does not sell roadbed specifically for the gantry track, their straight roadbed can be cut to fit.  I then spray painted the roadbed stone grey.  Looks really good.

Joe

I cut up fastrack to run mine.  If you cut down the center on Both sides of the center rail it’s gives a perfect distance when placed on the outside of a piece of fastrack. I mounted everything to a piece of hard board. 

Ryan, perfect! Tnx.

Lew

Thanks Ryan.  Great idea.  Whats the best way to cut the Fastrack?  thank you in advance.  Lou

I used my bandsaw. Cut like butter. Than just cleaned up with a file and sand paper.

Great.  Thank You!

I used Plastruct I-beams as rails, and thick fiber-board as concrete walkways alongside. Cheap!

Lew - I mated the Gargarves to FT using the above pins with no problem - there is a slight height difference which I made up with 1/4" luan - works well.

My two gantries roll on two long rails made up of Ross rails (#912 package (25) of 10" rails), spiked (Micro-Engrg medium track spikes) to the Homasote base in this area of the layout...

A slot cut through the table adjacent to a rail (2nd and 3rd photos) is for the remote control cables.  Gantry movement along their rails is 'digital'....IOW, pinky-power.

The cranes (1 magnet, 1 clamshell) are adjacent to the table edge which is an imaginary seawall to which ships tie up to receive or deliver appropriate cargo.   "Ships" will be docking someday...

when I get one of these under my pillow...

KD

Those "round tuits" are more common than one might believe! LOL!

Geysergazer, wow, this thread is now almost 2 years running, what did you decide on? DKDKRD, that’s impressive having two moving cranes on your neat layout, cool. I simply need room to place my Lionel command crane car sets on the layout. Great ideas fellows. Happy Railroading Everyone

GarGraves

For those of you that went with the Gargraves option, have you had any trouble getting power from your Fastrack section to it?   I used the Fastrack tubular transistor piece with Gargraves pins to the gantry crane section.  I have a power drop to my Fastrack that works properly, however no power goes to the gantry crane section. I used a multimeter to check continuity, and both outside rails are fine.  The center rail doesn’t have continuity.  I have crimped the center rail and everything is tight.  Any thoughts on what is going on?

Just run a jumper from the center rail of the Fastrack to the center rail of the Gargraves crane track, problem solved!

gunrunnerjohn - thanks for the suggestion.  I tried running a jumper from the Fastrack section to the Gargraves section, and it still didn't work.  I then decided to apply power directly to the gantry crane track section and it still didn't' work.  I used my multimeter and discovered that while I had 18 volts going to the track, only around 7 volts was coming out in the middle of the section.  I then used a Scotchbrite pad to remove the blackening from the center rail and that did the trick.  The track was not dirty, it was the black "paint" on the center rail that was the culprit.  Lesson learned with Gargraves track!

I thought the two extra rails could use a rail bumper so I 3D printed this:

there is a hole for LED to light the dome.

they are painted bumper RED. the design fits over the Ross-Custom track ties.

So that old (only 5 to 7 years younger than me, so assuredly old ) crane has moved a lot of scrap on the Plywood Empire Route in these intervening years. I cut up some Fastrack for the ways the crane rolls on.

A bit rough like everything these hands do these days but it sure does work. Notice the black string passing over a pulley in foreground.

That string winds on/off a drum which is part of a salvaged 282 crane mechanism mounted under the table.

The other end of the string passes over a second pulley and is attached to a suitable weight hanging under the table.

An overall view of this busy area.

Lew, Good to see you posting again.

Steve

KD has his gantry tracks without ties which would be common with concrete under the crane.  His appear to have rail spikes but they could also be just glued, with say E-6000 clear glue,  to gray fake concrete.

I went with 1/2 ties by cutting up 027 track ties to make them as they would take screws to hold the track down.  Fake sleeper ties are in between the 1/2 cut up 027 ties.   I had not thought of just gluing them down to my fake painted gray concrete.

Charlie

I used Plastruct u shaped plastic rods.