Buying a intermodal crane acc. I am looking to see and ask which cars will work with this acc. Want to be on the look out for some cars to use with this great acc. Thanks.
Original Post
Replies sorted oldest to newest
From what I have read and seen, the Lionel Husky containers are too big for the Lionel Intermodal crane. The crane requires some modification to fit thee larger containers. The crane does work well with the smaller Maxi-Stack containers.
The Lionel TTUX spine and Maxi Stack cars were made for the I/M loaders. These are a lot closer to 1/64 scale than 1/48 but they fit the crane best. The crane is notorious for breaking a small gear that raises the container. The gear is fragile and hard to find as a replacement part. I bought a second crane just to have parts.
Because of this, weight is another factor when picking containers or trailers to unload.
Here are a few pix of my I/M yard.
Attachments
Images (3)
I did some mods to my IM crane to allow it to pick up the larger Lionel containers. I slightly shortened the arm ends for clearance and removed some material from the side of the vertical arms pieces. This allows the arms to clear the container and also the latch to grip the container tightly and not drop it. It picked up the MTH RailKing containers perfectly stock, but the mods didn't damage that capability, so that was a good thing. 
