I was down in the train room waiting for the laundry to finish and found myself playing with another old tinplate project from my college days. This is a prewar Lionel 2660 series crane car that I put back into service with some "Yankee Ingenuity".
I acquired this as part of a tattered old Lionel set that I was given by a friend of a friend when they heard I was into trains. (I distinctly remember that she was the first person I met who called me "the Train Guy"!) I was able to find a "before" picture in my archives. As you can see the crane was in tough shape with rust, missing parts and a completely shattered Bakelite boom.
I wasn't very familiar with late prewar Lionel at the time so I struggled to repair the set. I was able to find replacement booms for sale but they were a little expensive ($30 with shipping was a fair bit of the train budget back then). I was pawing through my toolbox while working on something else when I picked up a box cutter with a missing blade and felt a moment of inspiration.
The boom is nothing more than the body of an old box cutter, painted silver, with a few washers and sections of brass tubing to set the spacing. I wanted to make the crane a little different so I borrowed a coal scoop from a LEGO set and rigged it up with some thin cord. The rest of the crane car got a quick grind off and spray on to clean it up.
Of course it works-- turn the crank and the bucket goes up and down. Can't get more simple than that!
I suppose that I could take this car apart again, use my 3D printer to make a new boom and make it look more "realistic"... but I feel like the story associated with how it got to where it is today is more entertaining.
