The 1935 NIEMAG GLEISBAUKRAN is monumental!

Crane, maintenance of way railcar, or a crazy thing with lots of hooks? All of the above, but what stands out is its sheer size and without a description who knows what it is?!?!

The railcar with the big boom installed over a million window cabin is for track construction, assembled track sections could be offloaded from a flat car, traverse through the car above the cabin and placed on other side for installation.

Winding drum and machines are modeled inside the cabin. I chose to paint the machine in dark brown with weathering along the lower part of cabin as a disused railway vehicle on a siding.

Constructing the model was relatively easy compared with others by Behnke although I found the cabin to be a tight and difficult fit on the chassis. The mistakes I made with this kit was installing the cabin higher on the frame than it should be, but I found the fitting too difficult, it did not readily slide into place. The second mistake was installing the hooks too low in the boom, they should have been attached higher inside the boom frame to realistically allow track to slide through channel above cabin. One day I will receive buffers for this and maybe then correct the hooks, but in the meantime it is a pretty cool contraption!