Rail Conductor - AniMove - Animate a Gantry Crane

A logging railroad needs a gantry crane to traverse parked log cars and lift logs off the cars and into the bay to be tugged to the city.

Rail Conductor AniMove DCC Decoder Traverses Gantry Crane

This video shows how the final product works.

The crane structure (on the far side) has a sliver of sheet metal that hangs through a long saw cut through the subroadbed the length of the gantry span. The sheet metal has a hole at each end at the low point (under the roadbed). There is a fishing line attached at each end. At one end (pictured below) is a continuous rotating servo (ROB-10189) pulling the fishing line on a thimble spool (my bride had a spare from her sewing hobby). A piece of sheet metal was drilled, bent and installed to hold the servo:

Rail Conductor AniMove DCC Decoder Servo Traverses Gantry Crane

At the other end is a mounted plastic pulley wheel that came off old draw hardware. The fishing line goes over the pulley and is tied to a rather large fishing weight to keep the line tight and prevent the gantry from kinking up on its dedicated rails:

Rail Conductor AniMove DCC Decoder Servo Pulls Gantry Crane Anchored by Fishing Weight

Here are the DCC commands to configure and operate the gantry crane:

TBD