Heljan Operating container crane and DCC

[kael]

Hi All, My wife just got me the Heljan operating container crane. There is a mention in the documents on how to connect it to any DCC system, but there are no instructions on how to do so. I use a Digitrax Zephyr system - has anyone tried to hook up one of these cranes to a DCC system and if so could they share how they did this? Thanks,

[cacole]

Type "heljan container crane" into Google and there will be several pages of discussion about this product.

Sorry, I can't offer any more help than that.  At a price of around $750 I'll sure never own one.

[MisterBeasley]

$530 on sale now at Walthers.  $450 buy-it-now on eBay.

I think Heljan made a marketing blunder with this.  Obviously, if it's being discounted this deeply at Walthers, it's not a big seller and they've got more of them on their shelves than they feel comfortable with.

This is, according to their ads and manuals (available on-line) a DCC device.  But, the system is designed to be stand-alone, so they basically provide a complete DCC system with it.  That's nice for people who don't have DCC, but it bumps the price way up for others who already have DCC.  It has it's own control unit, which probably looks like a throttle/base station combination.  When this came out, I looked at the manuals and it looked to me like you could actually run this from any DCC throttle.  If so, though, then they could have reduced the base price by a hundred dollars or so, and sold their control unit separately.

Kind of a neat unit, particularly in the videos.  It looks like they're using the Faller Car System to provide "ambience" around the unit.  It would be interesting to see that really used in an integrated fashion - bringing in trucks for loading/unloading.

[jrbernier]

  One of our club members bought the 'non-powered' version - looks very nice.  But, it appears that it can only handle 20' containers.  Does the powered on have the same limitation?

Jim

[cacole]

Someone (Walthers or Model Railroader) had an on-line video demonstration of this thing a couple of years ago.  The container has to be turned 90 degrees to get it out between the legs.  Not realistic at all, but you can't expect too much from a novelty item.  You supposedly had to have metal plates in the top of the containers or it couldn't pick them up because it used magnetism.

There may be more than one version of this puppy, too, so the one the OP has may not be the same as the one in the video.

[kael]

Hi guys, I actually thought about this a bit and I don't see a reason why I can't just hook the rails on the Heljan crane to my bus going to my track from the Digitrax system. The crane has a default DCC address of 4, so I could do that. I think the reason that they provided a complete DCC control with it is so that it would work with either DC or DCC. I want to hook it up to my DCC system because I want to setup a sound decoder with the same address and have cool crane sounds come out of a speaker when I use the crane(although, come to think of it, I should be able to do this with the included controller anyway - duh!). I have only used it a little but I have to say it is very impressive. It is mostly made out of metal and the structure is very solid. You are supposed to be able to use a PC style joystick with it as well(the older non-usb kind) - sadly I threw out my old joysticks when I went to the newer USB style ones. I will let you know how things go.