Cape Town Cowans Sheldon Dry Dock Crane

An icon of British engineering, this crane was erected at the Sturrock Graving dock in Cape Town in 1942 to service Royal Navy vessels during the Second World War. Two similar cranes were built for No 10 dock, H.M. Dockyard at Devonshire (Order number 6599,600 1-7-38). The Cape Town crane built by Cowans Sheldon (Order number 8118  28-6-42) is still going strong.

This Meccano model, the size of a level luffer, has been built four times over the years — a constant love affair. The first was radio controlled. This model has all the features of the prototype including pivoting floating bogies for travelling around curves at each end of the dock driven by one motor, double hoist, and a screw luffing counterweight mechanism for the jib.  Everything is pretty much according to scale, including the machinery!