Intermodal Crane Drops Trailers

The Lionel crane was made to pickup Lionel's trailers  and if you are using it to pick up scale sized trailers, it does not work well.  I have a friend that extended the forks on the clamp and now has good success picking up the scale trailers.

If you are using the Lionel trailers, I am not sure why it is not holding.

Good luck and happy railroading,

Don

FWIW, somewhere here I detailed the mods I did to my IM Crane to make it more reliable. 

While the contention is that it was made to pick up Lionel trailers, the truth is the Lionel ones gave me the most problems!  The RailKing trailers are just a bit narrower, and the jaws would lock on those and pick them up.  Many times the slightly larger Lionel trailers would be dropped.

I took some material out of the vertical parts of the jaws to give them a wider "bite" so they'd close on the Lionel trailers.  I also shortened the tips a bit as they wouldn't open wide enough to drop over the Lionel trailers, before the mod you had to be EXACTLY positioned to grab them. 

I changed resistors in the control to optimize the drive of the various motors, some I had to increase, some I had to decrease.  Also, open up the gearbox and properly lube it, that made a difference as well.

I actually had to give the forks more voltage to get positive locking, at 10 volts they'd never work for me.  However, that caused the traversal to be too fast, so I added resistance to slow those motors down.

I'm actually thinking of larger mod to use regulated voltages for the motor drives.

Thanks for replies.  I am trying this on MTH Railking containers 1 7/8 inches wide and 6.5 oz.  I have also tried various Lionel piggyback vans.  I have the transformer controlling voltage to the crane right next to the control levers so I can easily change  voltage.  Without even having a trailer on the jaws, I clamped them shut.  Using my fingers, I could feel that there was some pressure to keep them closed.  But as I moved the  closed jaws from side to side, it did not take long for me to feel the tension release which is what causes the load to drop.  Changing the voltage did not matter.    Gunrunnerjohn, I read your threads on modification you made to this accessory.  But I did not see mention of keeping the jaws pressed tight being an issue.  Have others had this problem?  I have a friend who says his crane has the same problem as mine but I have not seen this issue discussed before on this forum.    How does this function work?   My crane works in all other ways.  The jaws just seem to loosen up when I try to move the load from side to side.  Phil

I believe there is an over-center lock that holds them.  It's not a bulldog hold, but once I did the mods, I didn't have a problem with it dropping containers.  The reason I had to slow down the traverse function was I needed more voltage to get a proper "lock" on the jaws.  You can actually feel the difference when you try to pull them apart if they actually lock.  I didn't modify anything in the locking mechanism, the other mods were sufficient.  For me, the biggest problem with the jaws locking was not getting exactly centered on the trailer, as well as not having enough width to allow the jaws to actually lock.  That was why I shaved the inside of the arms.

What ever happened to works right out of the box?

Clearly doesn't apply to the IM crane.   While they're a pretty neat accessory, they are cheaply built and take some tweaking to make them work.

I have owned two and they both worked "right out of the box".  By the way, it has not been made for over 10 years so how do we know this one did not work "right out of the box"?

To me, this is one of Lionel's all time great accessories.

Happy railroading,

Don

What can I say Don, you have the luck of the Irish.   This is the only one I have had, and it didn't work as delivered.  I mean, it "sort of" worked, but it needed some improvement.  It actually works pretty well now.

I think it would have been a MUCH better accessory if they had provided lower gearing so that things moved at a more prototypical speed.  Also, balancing the different functions so you didn't have to "fine tune" the voltage for each would have been nice.

10 years!! I didn't think it was that long. Since intermodal is the way things are done today, I'd think it would be cataloged at least once every two years. Maybe it just wasn't a big seller? It does take up a lot of room.

Hi Guys,

I have the Southern Pacific red crane.  It was never a problem and one of my favorite things to operate.  It would pick up Lionel trailers, containers, the small MPC era trailers, and MTH trailers with no problems.  I especially liked putting the MPC era trailers in the well cars like you see in real railroading. it just might need to be worked on a litte.  Maybe take it to a local Lionel service station.  Good luck with it.  Don't give up on it.  It's a lot of fun to operate.

Jim

Mine works fine after the mods.  Since I've had a number of people tell me they have the same problems and ask about the mods, I'm assuming that all of the IM cranes don't function as flawlessly as the ones in this thread.

Here is some more have learned.  With no load on the jaws, I press clamp,  and using my fingers, I can feel tension on the jaws.  If I move the load up or down, the tension remains.  But when I move the jaws from left to right, the tension eases and would cause any load to drop.  If I keep my one finger on the clamp lever, thus keeping the solonoid engaged, I can move a load up, down, rich, or left and it stays put.  John, from what you know from seeing the insides of this thing, do you see a solution for my specific problem.  I am not sure I have the skill to do all your various mods.  Maybe I could just do a   change to the (clamp/unclamp) solonoid lever to keep it engaged when the crane moves back and forth and that might be easy and I know it works. I am aware of the need to not leave the solonoid energized  for a long time.  This was the last one my dealer had and he will take it back but I do like the accessory.  Phil

I didn't do anything special to keep the jaws clamped, other than shave the inside of the arms.  What I observed with mine was the arms would keep the jaws from locking properly, they just were not quite wide enough.  You're right, keeping the solenoid engaged would solve that, but that was not an option I wanted to pursue, for the same reasons you state.   Since mine barely cleared the widest trailers as well, I bobbed the jaw ends a bit as well.  Without that, it made it difficult to line up properly on a trailer to pick them up.

I suppose you could wire a relay across the traversal motor to engage the solenoid for traverse action, that would be pretty easy.  Since the traverse movement isn't typically a long time, it shouldn't be too bad.  I might be tempted to reduce the voltage to the solenoid in that case. 

For mine, I found it needed quite a bit of voltage to properly lock the jaws, have you tried a bit more "juice" to see if that creates a better lock?

Before I make a final decision I want to talk to my local repair guy who has a call in to Lionel about this issue.  Also, I want to get some other trailers and see if that makes any difference.  I will post any new information I come up with.  Phil

I'll be interested in what you come up with.