I thought it was the ugliest diesel ever, but when I watched B-73 moving around and painted right on the video it just looks downright homely, not ugly. Amazing what the right paint job does!
Alan

Sounds like all the $$$ your saving using your own cranes your spending on rigging. Just keep an eye on the new rigging and don't let any one borrow it, it's just as expensive to repair it if it gets ripped or damaged. Been on a couple jobs where an inspection of the rigging before a lift found tears/rips in the slings that were covered by someone sliding the softener over them to hide the damage.

Good advice Baldwin,
The 20' polyester sling we used was brand new from the Burnham turntable unloading job a few months ago. We only had 2 sill hooks with the correct dimensions , that's why I went with the polyester sling for the Ohio's end plus we had a lot more lift height than the wrecker. The under side of B-71 is very open with few sharp edges but it's dirty and oily so I had a velcro closing sleeve made to protect the sling. After the lift I opened the sleeve, took out the undamaged and clean sling , put it in a clean/dry plastic container with a snap on lid and then power washed the sleeve and hung it out to dry. I'm going to do my best to keep these tagged lifting devices in perfect shape till they fail an inspection and then they get cut up and tossed. Improper storage and abuse both damage lifting devices.

its great to see the cranes doing these lifts but I find it funny that the only pics I have been able to find are posted here, and yet there is nothing posted on IRM's official website let alone its blogs there. It would be great if something could also be posted there after all it was done with IRM members doing the work instead of using contractors.

Hey Trackwalker,
I just wanted to show the railway heritage community what they can accomplish with a little investment and research in their cranes.
Maybe I'll start a new topic asking" who" has used "what" type/model crane to lift "what" at their heritage site.
As for the IRM blog ,you aren't the first person to bring that up to me . I will try my best to get something going in that direction. It may even help bring in some donations for painting the cranes. Maybe people can vote what colors they like ,black with white or yellow trim or Zito Yellow for the CNW wrecker .CNW yellow or Zito Yellow for the CNW Ohio.

I used an ancient Insley K12 crawler crane to erect our prefabricated steel building at Youngstown Steel Heritage. To get the reach I needed I fabricated a new 20' boom section for it, bringing the total length of boom to 50'.

The big hangup some people have with older cranes is the issue of certification. Not sure that really matters much for an all volunteer force where nobody is an employee. There are many older cranes that are perfectly serviceable but lack all the government permissions to legally operate in a for profit business setting.

Wow Rick,
That was a brilliant way to meet your needs and not waste time and energy looking for a mid boom section that propbably had damage anyways. You opened my eyes even further with that solution.
You're right about some people being stymied on cranes and rules. It's easier getting and keeping a crane certified than a steam locomotive. And it's not rocket science to become a certified crane operator/instructor.
I aways liked the look and handy size of Insleys.
It's great what you're doing at your heritage site, keep it up.
Mark.

Mark,
Thanks. I bought that Insley for $1,200 from a hoarder who had it in the middle of his property and used it to move stuff around. The township got after him to clean up the property and the crane had to go. It was in horrible shape, track pins worn out, so much lost motion that half the clutches wouldn't engage and the hook on it looked like it was hand forged by a blacksmith. But it had a good running Detroit Diesel and looked salvagable.

So I bought it, shipped it to the museum, adjusted the clutches, changed out most of the track pins, repainted it, built the boom section and went from a single part hand made block to a four part block. I wanted a four part block so that I could more finely control hoisting and lowering as it was really built as a dragline and ran fast.

When we poured the concrete piers for the building I used it to place the concrete, using a concrete bucket that I bought on Craigslist. Then when the columns and trusses were erected the K12 really proved its usefulness. After the building had been erected and I no longer had a use for it I placed it for sale, and sold it for $2,500. I basically took what would have been an expense, turned it into a source of revenue and had a lot of fun in the process working on a rather interesting old machine.

I have never had a lot of money to work with on the Youngstown Steel Heritage project, so I've had to come up with inventive solutions to problems. Sometimes my solutions are at best unconventional, but we get the job done.

Rick

I would've bought your crane if I'd known about it's sale instead of wasting $3,500 on our Koehring Crane model 205 on boom repairs alone , and it can't even crawl cause of missing drive train parts. It's used to coal up our Russian Decapod and was in such a condition I couldn't ignore it any longer . It came from the Chicago and Western Indiana RR and worked off a flatcar for them.
I like the way you get a machine for your purpose , use it and then even make a profit with it's sale. I'd be happy to just break even. Heaven for bid if we ever get rid of anything over here.
Your little Pumpkin crane would have been perfect for us.
Thanks for the pics, nice permeant building.
Mark

BTW Matt, the Insley came with a clamshell!

I guess my greatest equipment coup was our backhoe. I paid $700 for an old TL-16DA Tractorloader, used it for several years then traded it for a White Oliver 2-78-15 backhoe. It needed its engine rebuilt so for about $2,000 in parts I rebuilt it and fixed a few other problems. It got to be too big for our small site so I sold it for $3,000 to a friend who was actually living in a house that I own. Fast forward two years. My "friend" skips town and leaves the backhoe behind. So now I have it back and he in essence paid for its overhaul.

Also left behind a cletrac model 40. Nice added bonus.

Some of us have this wild idea of putting a sideboom on the Cletrac and using it on the two foot gauge railroad as a mini Hulchers derailment cleanup machine. It would pick up everything but the J&L 58.

That's a good one Rick, it's amazing how somethings work out in the end.
One of my best deals was (very long story cut real short) me buying a Chicago Bulls jacket ($125) when they were real hot ,1980s, for a railroad official , him ordering 6-8 company gons to one of his yards were a contractor , needing to despose of several thousand scrap ties and not wanting to pay for it, did just that. Scrap ties went to the company pit , the railroad official was happy, the scraper was happy and I was happy because the scraper gave me the 160 ton Bucyrus wrecker he was supposed to cut up for the railroad company. It's now a very handy machine for us.
By the by, the Company shipped her to us for free.