Lionel 6-12781 Intermodal Crane Question

I didn't hear anything positive or negative, so I broke out the X-acto saw.

I'm happy to report, the surgery was a success.  Don't know why the jaws have such a long end on them, but the accessory works a lot better with 3/16" removed from each end.  It's a lot easier to pickup trailers now.

Could you please post a picture of your modification. I just purchased a Lionel intermodal crane and would consider doing the same thing. I would prefer a picture, so I get the cut in the right place.

Thanks: JoeK

Truthfully, a picture won't do much now, as I have already made the modifications.  I actually did two different things.  I tried to take a picture of it, but I couldn't make it represent what I did.  If I had a before and after, that might make it different.

First off, I ended up taking a total of 1/4" off each of the horizontal bottom clamp ends.  That should be easy to do, as long as you measure right.  I started out with 3/16", but realized that I could take off more and it would make the whole rig work better.

Next, I noticed another issue.  When you clamp the Lionel trailers, they're a bit wider than the MTH trailers, and it was very difficult to get exactly aligned so that the clamps would lock.  They tended to drop the trailers at times because the clamps would open.

To fix that, I took a bit less than 1/16" off the sides of the clamps tapered off about 1" up to nothing.  The 1/16" is the maximum amount removed, that's right at the bottom of the vertical member where it joins the clamp bottom.  I may take a bit more off there, but I'm going to tinker with it for awhile.  It's still pretty close, but it works 100% better now with the mods.  I suspect another 32nd off the sides would be a good idea.

Finally, I made an electrical mod.  It turns out that the motors are very unbalanced as far as the power allowed for each function.  The lateral travel was pretty sluggish, even after greasing the gears, rails, and rollers.  If I turned up the power to make that work well, the up/down and the wheel drive was too fast.

I added a 27 ohm resistor across the 20 ohm existing one for the lateral drive, this gave it more drive and allowed me to match the speed better.

One final mod I'm thinking on.  The wheel drive is still too fast for all the other functions, this thing isn't a race car!  I'm thinking of increasing the resistors for the two wheel motors to slow them down a bit so it's easier to nudge the crane into position over a trailer.

I hope that helps.

As many have noted in other threads (and as I have experienced), the crane will only handle very light containers, typically the small ones on the undersized Lionel spine units.  If you try to lift heavier ones, the internal plastic gears will crack under the load.

Well, I have the smaller "traditional" sized cars, so I have the smaller containers.  I have also weighed the trailers I'm lifting and they are 6.5oz, so they're within the stated 7oz capacity.

With my mods, it's working great.  The only remaining issue is that the drive wheels are a bit "speedy", so I'm thinking of tinkering with those resistors to slow them down some to more prototypical speeds.

I do recommend lubing the gears to minimize wear and friction, that helped a bunch.  It really made the thing run a lot quieter.

I'm actually surprised nobody else had the problem with the width of the jaw opening, especially if you were working with larger containers.