Thanks for the kind offer to take further pictures of the railroad wrecker crane. I imagine it is secured against entry, and taking pictures in the close confines of the crane's house would not work out too well.
From the photo you posted in your second post on this thread, it looks like the auxiliary block is hooked to a picking beam made for lifting railroad car frames or car bodies. Looking at the way the pedestal for landing the boom on is built and other details, it looks like this crane was in service well into fairly recent times. It looks like the pedestal for landing the boom on was built out of whatever steel the shops had left over from other railroad equipment or structures they might have had in their boneyard.
From the degree of rotting on the car deck planks, it would seem that this crane and its tender car have been sitting for quite a few years as a static display. The phrase: "Quietly sleeping in the sun" comes to mind in looking at your photos of this crane.
The beauty of a lot of the old steam equipment is its simplicity and inherent ruggedness- or forgiveness might be a better term for the engines and machinery. No forgiveness in the boiler, though. We've touched on the issues surrounding pressure vessels of different types on this 'board, and one member has related a story of how the boiler on a locomotive crane his father owned had failed, killing the crane operator. On a lot of the old steam cranes, as the boilers passed the point of no return, no practical repair being possible, they were run on compressed air. With the advent of rotary screw air compressors, getting a compressor with enough displacement to run a steam crane became more practical. Of course, when a steam crane had reached that point, it was unlikely that the owner/operators were going to put much money into it. As a result, the loose fits and loose clearances eventually would spell the end of the steam cranes. While steam tended to seal and make up for loose fits of pistons in their cylinders and similarly sloppy fits on slide or piston valves, compressed air would not. The result was a steam crane that ran on steam despite a lot of wear on the pistons, cylinders, valves and similar would often not run as well on air, and sometimes not at all. This was the end for most of the steam cranes, and they were often scrapped at that point. This old steam wrecker is definitely a survivor. Whether she is run on compressed air from time to time, or simply just sits out in the sun with windblown brush accumulating on the bed of her tender car, she is hopefully going to sit intact for many years to come.