Here's a closer look at the superstructure of this magnificent crane model by Thomas Kelly. The model was built for a company (Goettle Corp.) out of Cincinnati, Ohio for a crane operator that was retiring and the company wanted to present him with a model of the crane he had operated for many years. The crane is a Link-Belt LS338 100 ton crawler with a "Swinging Leads" piledriving attachment. The crane was built by using the Kibri Liebherr 883 crawler as a base. Goettle furnished many pictures of the real machine including detail shots of the boom and crane body. It is numbered for the actual crane the gentleman operated. Thomas used the tracks "as is" since the measurements were almost identical. The crane body is sheet styrene laminated to parts of the Kibri kit to reproduce the LS338 shape. The drums are nonfunctional since they wanted a 4 drum system like the real one in a waterfall configuration. The boom and mast were modified to replicate the LS338 system from the Kibri kit parts and the counterweight was built from 28 separate pieces of styrene to look like the real one. Two Sheepscot piledriving kits were modified to produce the swinging leads type of piledriving rig. Hammer was modified from Sheepscot kit to look like the photos that Goettle provided. Thomas used a real piece of the crane that they sent to replicate the paint color and custom decals to letter it. The Model is mounted on a small base with scenery to look like some of the photos. The company reported that the gentleman was very impressed when he received it and several others at the party asked where their crane was. All told, it took over 100 hours to build this baby. Also shown in Photo Gallery 186.

Posted April 1, 2004