Walters MOW crane, can I change to DCC

[jwar]

Is it possable to mount a transducer in the Walters Locomotive Crane, would defenely purchase one if its possable.

[Anonymous]

I would not recommend buying one of the powered cranes. The one I have will not stay on the track. It is the way the motor is geared to the trucks, causing the trucks to twist and derail. There is very little room for a decoder also. If you did get the thing to stay on the track, one option might be installing a decoder in a crane tender car(hey, why not power the crane tender!). This might be an idea I will persue. I have several other cranes and could use the crane tender car with any of them. Thanks for your post. I would never have thought about this.

[cmrproducts]

We have one of those cranes and they sure are slow movers. It really slows down the layout operations during an OPs session!

We put a decoder in it and it runs sweet. We used a Digitrax DZ143 and hard wired it in the cab.

The biggest problem was stalling over the switches. We finally put wipers on all of the wheels and it will run smoothly across any of the Atlas dead frogs.

Now when we have an OPs session out will come the MOW crane and Blue Flag a section of track just to slow down the pace of the session a make the Dispatchers job just that much more fun.

Actually we really had to use it during one session as there was a piece of track causing some derailment problems and the crane was pulling a gondola with the spikes and stuff. The MOW operator was called out. He pulled it into the bad section and Blue Flagged the area and proceeded to fix the track. Then he called Dispatch and released the track section back into service!

But be prepared to replace the motor if you use the unit much. With our unit the motor finally burned up. We are now actively looking for a replacement high precision can motor

BOB H Clarion, PA

[jwar]

Thanks guys, from both of your posts the crane tender would probely be worth it, by just getting the dummy.

By using a crain or some other unforseen happing, hot box cards, engine failures ect. I think really adds to the operational aspect. Thanks again I think Im on to somthing very interesting..Take care...John