Hoist! Luff! Slew! - Part II
Use your brain - build a crane!
The Travelling Jib Crane was one of Frank Hornby's personal favourite models. One can easily understand why. It's so simple - yet so appealing! Like the little derrick, it was built with Outfit Number Two.
Footnote: The base should have been built with Angle Girders instead of Perforated Strips. My fault - I should have taken a second look at the illustration!
Here's a swivelling jib crane built with FAC, a fine example of the lightweight but sturdy framed structures you can build with this Swedish system. The winding gear was not yet fitted when the picture was taken.
Close-up of the roller bearing.
Close-up of the counterweight and winding gear. Note the Marklin winding handle.
Here's a motorized version of a swivelling jib crane, built from pre-WW II Marklin parts and powered by a vintage Jouets de Paris spring motor. Note that there also are home-made brass parts involved - including a professionally-made 5x7-hole flanged plate! The red hook, of course, is pure Meccano as the original "Blue Öyster Cult" hook supplied with the Marklin sets was far too light to use on its own.
This impressive level-luffing crane stands at Luma Park in Stockholm's "Docklands" district.
And here it is in drawing-room size, built of Red and Green Meccano!
Close-up of the roller bearing.
With the benefit of hindsight, I should have adjusted the proportions of the crane to get true Egyptian triangles (as we all know, those triangles are constructed of strips with 4, 5 and 6 holes). Or better still, built a "double-sized" crane (strips with 7, 9 and 11 holes).
And here's a little blocksetter built with the Russian construction set Yunost N:o 3. Yes - it's identical to the contemporary Meccano model!
This type of crane is called a hammerhead. It was built with Nickel Meccano after a drawing in the 1920s Marklin instruction book, adding a built-up ball bearing modelled after the contemporary Meccano Standard Mechanisms book.