I got one of these for my MOW train. Not sure the paint scheme is 100% but it’s close/good enough for what I’m doing. I filled the ends with styrene and built a mount for the gearboxes. I had to butcher off the electrocoupler mounts on the trucks to clear them. Also had the pleasure of restringing the boom, ha. Some quick phone shots:
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AWESOME job! The Kadees and the weathering really bring it to life.
Tom
Looks good Norm. Does it still operate? Hope you'll do a video if it does.
Norm,
What did you do to keep all the line rigging from coming off the pulleys when you turned it over to install the Kadees? I remember when I did that the first time.
It took me a good part of an hour to get all the line back in the correct places. 
Great job 
Thx guys. Yes Ron, it still works. Outriggers don't work that well but I don't really care. I may swap out the blue LEDs someday.
Al, I ended up putting some masking tape around the pulleys after restringing. I could then let the boom rigging go a little slack with much less chance of everything coming off the pulleys. Next time I might try to rig some rubber bands to keep everything taut. I did the disassembly and reassembly on my lap. This kept the tension on the boom rigging.
Nice work, your crane works great. In my opinion, this is the coolest train Lionel ever made.
CSX Al posted:Norm,
What did you do to keep all the line rigging from coming off the pulleys when you turned it over to install the Kadees? I remember when I did that the first time.
It took me a good part of an hour to get all the line back in the correct places.
Nice Job Norm!!
Al, you have to keep the lines without slack, like a rubber band on the hooks. Yep, re-rigging is a nightmare!!
Norm, Great job on the conversion. 
Looks awesome!
There is always some level of satisfaction completing a conversion like this that involves more than installing the Kadee couplers!
Nice job, and there's always a "catch" when you do any project it seems. The good thing about restringing the boom is you only ever do it once, after that you REMEMBER to secure it so it won't get tangled when you work on the car!
So, you said you had to re-string that boom. Man, you're a glutton for punishment!
It actually wasn't too bad, I just tried not to panic haha. I made a custom hook tool out of one my Harbor Freight picks to help. The trick was to figure out which way the windings lapped themselves after slipping off the pulleys. This took a bit of trial and error.
To be honest, I probably won't even run it that much. I had a NYC one years ago and regretted selling it.
What? No sound car?
I'm on the lookout, right now I just make my own sounds. 
My solution was to cannibalize a crane sounds shack and install the electronics into my own boom car.
With the coupler circuits freed up, that would get my creative juices flowing, figuring out some kind of extra CC use for them.
Been mulling over the proper decoration of a PRR crane too. Mine will have gone through 3 road changes once finished, starting off as NYC then CN.
Bruce
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