When CP Rail passed the roundhouse on to the City of Toronto, a number of pieces of shop equipment were left behind. One of these is this Elwell-Parker mobile crane. Built around 1947 and of 1 ton capacity, the crane is operated entirely on 36 volt DC electric power, driven by a gasoline motor-generator set.

With the rail museum about to come into existence, an obvious requirement was that the crane would have to be moved from its storage location in bay 32. The equally obvious way to do this was to attempt to restore it to operation and drive it away. Accordingly, in the fall of 2006, a TRHA crew began the task of investigating the crane’s innards to see what it needed to run.

The generator is a Continental flat-head four cylinder gasoline engine direct coupled to a 36 volt DC generator. Sold as a “Ready-Power” industrial generator set it is a good example of a packaged modular power unit quite modern for its day. An entirely self contained unit, when servicing is required the entire gen-set can be removed from the crane in one lift and immediately replaced by another identical unit requiring the disconnection of only four wires and six bolts. Regrettably we had no means of lifting it and had to work on it in place.

It very quickly became clear that the crane had simply been driven to its resting place and abandoned. The good news was that everything was there, no parts were missing and the engine coolant had not frozen at any time during the twenty years it had sat unused. We replaced the starting battery and key switch (the original key was missing) and cranked the engine over. Naturally it didn’t start but did exhibit signs of wanting to go. With this encouragement we went ahead and re-built the Zenith carburetor, cleaned the fuel tank and lines, added a fuel filter and generally cleaned everything up. New spark plugs and wires, distributor cap, condenser and points were all fitted thereby reminding us how far automotive technology has improved in the last fifty years.

By the time we got all this work done winter was nipping at us but success was ours – it ran! All the crane functions of lift, slew and boom up/down worked. Forward and reverse travel was possible too and we backed our new friend “Elwell” down the length of bay 32 on a test run. The engine showed its age by leaving a trail of blue smoke and being noisy but its automatic idle feature and governor worked just fine. Work remaining to be done as of February 2007 includes renovation of the control contactor blocks which are badly eroded and a further exterior clean and paint job.