The water crane at the North end of the platform at Beddgelert is one of the most prominent features of the station.
Our representation of it was scratch built by Himself and brought to life with the assistance of the legendary Stefco.
The component parts are brass tube and rod plus a few brass washers all soldered together.
The main upright is tube with a slightly smaller but much longer solid rod inside which extends below the baseboard, which is how it swivels.
The top horizontal pipe is solid rod as it was easier to bend the end to shape, with a bit of tube added on the end for the counter weight. Washers were slipped on to show the flanged joints and soldiered into place.
The bottom flange is just small pieces of brass fashioned and soldiered in place.
The drip stand was similarly made from brass.
Motorising it was an afterthought. Steve Coulson came up with a mechanism made up of components sourced from his man cave full of various dismantled electronic consumer products.
At the heart of it is a low geared 3v motor – probably liberated from an old video recorder or something similar – which is wired to a three position switch hidden beneath the baseboard and gets its juice (currently) from a battery.
The drive from the motor is connected to the aforementioned inner brass rod and the crane thus swivels – delightfully sedately – hither and thither.
Alas, at the moment, there is no auto-stop feature. So if the operators become distracted, and forget to turn the switch to the central ‘off’ position when it has turned 90 degrees, you sometimes look down the platform and notice the water crane turning round, and round, and round like a malfunctioning clock!
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