Pulley

This does not work for what I am referring to. This is good for moving rotation to a new location, I want to reverse linear movement, and lift things more efficiently

to unroll one rope drum while rolling up another. Reverse your placement of your second rope drum, their directional depending on mounting. might take a couple tries if its on 2 separate grids, if its on the same grid the drum will hold its placement, just rotate it 180 when placing the 2nd drum

to reverse direction on something other than drums, learn to make timber peg cogs. similar to the recently added large block drive system, peg cogs are little jumpy but does the work. Or you could just play with the "gears mod", and let the dev's focus on more important things until the game is stable.

Do they run on their own, or will they need the handle to turn them? I am hoping for something gravity driven

Make a Klang Engine if you want it automated...

Having rope pulleys that could be used to simple change the direction of a rope would be a great improvement, at the moment you can't really build a proper crane, with a winding gear at the base and the rope looped over a pulley on an arm, your forced instead to place the winding gear at the top of the structure :-(

Exactly, Neil. Reverse motion and even apply mechanical advantage by multiple pulleys on the crane "hook". Rotation is ok, but so much more can be made in this game with linear motion of rope