What are your thoughts on the cornerstone model kit? Are there any others I should be looking at?
The Mi Jack I need will be a static model for my port area, any thoughts?
Dave
I got one when they first came out it did come out a good model it is in a box somewhere under the layout so i just might have to go look for it.
Russell
I have not built the Walthers kit, but I have seen several assembled examples of it, and it looks pretty good.
I have been around the real thing, so a lot of my personal feelings might be very nit-picky about missing details, but overall it looks like a MiJack, and should not be too difficult to assemble.
Down here in Florida, MiJack cranes are used for road building, so you do not need to go to a container yard to see one. I do not know if they are used this way in other places.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
It's a fairly easy build. I left mine in the orange-as-molded color. I also cut one of mine down to fit a smaller location - twice. The crane can be posed in different positions to take containers of various sizes and has magnets in it to hold containers that have a metal plate added to do this.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Hi Kevin,
beings I live in Pennsylvania and the roads are constantly being built or rebuilt I have never seen anything like the Mi Jack being used here. I kinda think it would be beings our state flower is the Orange cone,
DAVID FORTNEYbeings I live in Pennsylvania and the roads are constantly being built or rebuilt I have never seen anything like the Mi Jack being used here.
Down here there are sometimes large pre-cast concrete assemblies that go underneath the roadbed of the highways. The MiJacks unload these from flatbed trucks and lower them into the ground.
It is similar to container unloading, so they work perfectly.
SeeYou190Down here in Florida, MiJack cranes are used for road building...
http://www.mi-jack.com/applications/bridge/
note the extreme long span in a couple of the examples... and the implied utility of being able to do the equivalent of dam-style suspended cableway access over the whole of the deck being worked on. There are also examples of cranes using the same 5' sideways with beams across the space between parallel bridges to reach down to 'waterborne' supply and disposal.
SeeYou190Down here there are sometimes large pre-cast concrete assemblies that go underneath the roadbed of the highways. The MiJacks unload these from flatbed trucks and lower them into the ground. It is similar to container unloading, so they work perfectly. -Kevin
sandjamSeems that would add a lot of cost, grading and laying rail to lift, rather than the mobile cranes I see employed to do that job.
See the link I provided, or google 'Mi-Jack Bridge Construction' as a start. These are rubber-tired machines that occupy no more than about a 5' lane that does not have to be precisely graded; there are systems that coordinate lift and linkageless steering so that an over 90' span (!!) can be kept aligned with the two 'sides' on physically different bridge spans.
These would be a 'natural' for sequential lifting of precast subgrade units from trucks and loading them in a trench excavation; they would be as far superior to a stationary crane, or a mobile like a Grove that would need outriggers extended to raise and swing that kind of load, in this application as they are in random container access in intermodal yards.
And we have it again ...
York1 John
Took me 32 seconds to find at least one ...
sandjamI’ve never seen MI Jack cranes utilized tor truck unloading of Highway sub-assembly components anywhere in FL.
There were at least two of them used on the I-4/I-275 construction project near where you are at in Tampa. I saw them around the area of the Ybor City/Cruise Ship exits.
The Selmon/I-4 interchanges were built using different construction.
The Northern part of I-275 reconstruction from 2013-2017 near the interchanges for Land-O-Lakes and Wesley Chapel did not use them.
I have not seen any of them on the I-4 construction in Orlando.
All of the parts of the I-75 construction between Sarasota and Fort Myers had at least one on site. These segmented projects went from 2012 to 2018.
There were 4 of them on the site of the new bridge and approaches where Interstate 75 crosses the Caloosahatchee River. I think the picture John provided is of that construction project.
There were a few of them used in Jacksonville on the new downtown section of I-95 near the convention center. That has turned out to be an incredible improvement in traffic flow.
It was just a simple statement to let people know that MiJack cranes have other uses than Intermodal loading/unloading. I did not mean to ruffle your feathers (again).
DAVID FORTNEYWhat are your thoughts on the cornerstone model kit? Are there any others I should be looking at? The Mi Jack I need will be a static model for my port area, any thoughts? Dave
I built the cornerstone N Scale Mi Jack for my small yard. I don't move cars in and out -- it's basically just a yard for the scene.
This was the first model I built, and being N Scale, I learned quite a bit about handling small parts. I like the look of the model, though.