Reactor, gantry or intermodal crane?

I have a magnetic gantry crane and every kid that has visited my house plays with it for a considerable amount of time.  Ahem, some adults to, including the owner

 

 

 

- walt

I have all 3.

 

I think the intermodal crane has the best play value.You can drive it back and forth, move the lifting cradle from side to side, and up and down, and lift a container or truck box.  However, do be careful when buying one. There are known for having split gears when they get older. There have been several threads on this Forum regarding their repair. Also, stick with the lighter containers and trucks made by Lionel. (Atlas containers should be OK as well.) Stay away from the heavy diecast stuff like K-Line used to make. They really strain the mechanism.

 

I think the nuclear reactor is next in line. It is bright and colorful, with plenty of action. Give it a couple of gondolas for the fuel and waste pellets and you are good to go. I always get a lot of questions about it because it is so unique.

 

The crane comes in several versions, both with and w/o the magnet. The magnet works well for all kinds of steel scrap. Plus you can put a thumb tack in a Lionel canister or whatever and lift with that. Again, keep the loads on the light side. The crane itself is stationary, but can ride on non-powered wheels on rails. Gargraves makes a 5 rail track section for it, or you can make your own. I did see an article several years ago in one of the train magazines for remote control of the crane on the rails. Unfortunately, I don't remember the details.

 

Chris

LVHR

CTT ran an article in the November, 2009 issue on page 68 describing a homemade mechanism to make it move.  Cando followed up here on the forum with additional comments.

 

- walt

 

I wound up going with the reactor. Picked one up at my local train shop (Eastside Trains in Kirkland, WA) for $200. Installation was a bit tricky - this item was definitely not made for FasTrack. I had to trim off one side of my FasTrack in order to get it close enough for the boom arm to reach into the gondola. All in all, it's a pretty impressive addition to the train set and let's face it, having a nuclear reactor is just plain FUN!

 

I also picked up an AEC gondola. The gondola needs some work to really work well. The bottom of the gondola is flat with a pronounced raised center strip that causes the ore pellets to roll off to the sides and away from the magnetic boom arm. I'll probably make a small V shaped tray to put in the gondola bed to make the feeding of the reactor run more smoothly. 

 

I also ordered a RMT water tower painted in AEC colors to go with the reactor. They're currently on sale for only $25. Now if I can just find a little Homer Simpson figure to go with the reactor....that or a Godzilla figure. 

I am sure that if you check the "Bay" you can find Homer and/or Godzilla. Heck it is a nuclear facility Do a bit of surgery and join 1/2 of each. Then you can have Homerzilla!

My inner six-year old votes for the gantry crane.

Took some plastic card stock and made a V shaped tray to hold the nuclear fuel pellets. HUGE improvement in performance. Lionel should make such a tray should they remake the reactor in the future. 

I like your gondola tray. You should just make a couple of them to sell to construction challenged folks like me....

Great "fix"! Looks like it was part of the original design of the car.

You need to model that nice blue glow from the Cerenkov radiation.

I have the TMCC version of the gantry crane and it works great. However, I have seen reactor in operation on a friends layout and it sure has a "wow" factor. Tough choice.

The tray was incredibly easy to build and took about 20 minutes. All you need is a ruler and a piece of plastic sheet from the hobby shop. The two end pieces are 3/4" x 1 3/4". The trough is a single piece 3 1/2" long and 2" wide. SCORE - don't cut - a line lengthwise down the trough piece and gently bend it into a V shape so the bottom rests on the bottom of the gondola while the edges touch the walls of gondola. Assembly is simply laying one of end pieces flat on a surface and resting the trough on end with some cement holding them together (I used Gorilla Super Glue but any plastic cement should work). After the first side has dried flip it over and repeat taking care to make sure the end pieces align. Paint and you're done. It's a huge enhancement to the performance of the reactor. Not only does it make loading easier but it also keeps the plastic toxic waste pellets from spilling over when you dump them in the car.

SeattleSup,

What exactly will the reactor do?. The description of it online is a bit vague. Is the loading/unloading manual, automatic or both? Is the control building illuminated? Thanks

 

Roger

And do you have to constantly move the gondola forward/backward to complete the unloading? Thanks

 

Roger

I like it and will make one for my reactor. Thank you for the idea

jz

Like the Fukushima storage pools after the earthquake? or still...

It grabs the metal balls with the magnet arm and drops them into the reactor.  They exit through a slide and drop into the cup (or other appropriate container) that comes with the reactor. 

 

Simultaneously, the plastic glow in the dark "spent fuel" pellets come out through the trap door behind the drop gate that dumps them into the gondola.  (area where the blue light is in the pictures).  The operator then activates the drop gate to dump the plastic balls into a gondola.

 

The main structure is metallic mirror-like in finish (red in the pictured model, silver in the original).  It has red, yellow, and green LEDs that light up in a seemingly random pattern to make for a good show.

 

-Dave

Dave,

How do you get the arm to pick up all the balls without advancing the car? I guess you would have to design some sort of tilted container for the gondola to avoid that. 

 

Roger

I never actually completed my project, but I was going to do something similar to what SeatleSUP did.

 

My design was instead of an angled tray, a shallow cone that would sit on a cylinder.  This would keep the balls over roughly the same point as they were removed, since they will gravitate to the center when other balls are removed.

 

I did get as far as making the cone and cylinder from Evergreen plastic material (I forget the exact thickness, but it was one of the thinner ones). 

 

I never did tweak it optimally for design (proper height to work best with the magnet when down) or glue the 2 pieces together and paint them to make it look right.

 

It would probably be easy (with some math or trial and error) to do an alternate design with all flat pieces (think an upside down 4 sided pyramid) which could then sit on a square box for a base.

 

-Dave

 

Dave,

Youtube has a vid by a guy who made such a modification. Very elaborate. Looks like a piece of one of those old ball bearing games where you try to get them into slots, but there's a big curved plastic piece that angles the balls into one place. I'd like to find something simpler. It doesn't look like he fabricated it from scratch. 

 

Roger

 

Dave,

If I get one of these I've got a possible idea. I've got a "culvert ramp" that I made for a gondola to accept culverts from a culvert loader. At the time, I had an older model culvert loader that had a blown circuit board. I bought a new model loader and unloader and made a copy of the culvert ramp so I could have a second gondola. Neither of those new loader/unloaders worked out. Nothing but trouble.....twice to Lionel....couldnt' be fixed. Got my money back. So....I repaired the old one and I'm fine with it. But I have that ramp. I think I might be able to use it for this. The pellets could be dumped onto the ramp and move to the bottom where I could make (with plastic sheeting) a funneling device to make them eventually single file.  We'll see

 

Roger

I own the nuclear reactor also and my grandson would play with it for hours.  Putting the nuclear fuel in and spilling out the spent fuel into the gondola and all over.  We have picked up pellets over and over. Also, the flashing lights in the dark are great.  

 

I recently picked up the a log loader to go with my sawmill.  Both are fun also.  The log loader has a hand controller to run the lights, speed up the loader and drop the load.  

 

I really wanted a gantry crane, but passed this time.

 

Have fun.

 

David56

Ok.....I just bought one this morning. When it comes (and hopefully it works out of the box.....always dicey), I'm going to try and make a receptacle for my gondola (hopefully with that culvert ramp). I'll be back if I have success.

 

Roger

SeattleSUP,

I had a mistaken idea of how those metal pellets go into the gondola (as I haven't received shipment of my reactor). I've got a question about your "trough". I had the mistaken idea that the reactor dumped the metal pellets into the gondola. Apparently, it's the "spent" ones. So, I'm assuming that you manually pour the metal ones in there. Your v-shaped trough would keep them in single file. Did you have one end of it raised so that the pellets would run "downhill" toward the arm or do you move the whole train forward? I'm going to try and make the first option. And then make a container for the other end of the gondola to accept the "spent" ones. If I'm off base in my thoughts about this, let me know. Thanks

 

Roger