Model Railroading on the Cheap

   As I have said before I feel qualified to tell about tractors on flat cars. Finally I set up a scene on my layout that I recall from the early 1950s. I have taken some liberties with details but the concept is accurate. I am using John Deere tractors not Farmalls and I am using freight station team track not the company spur track.  I am using trucks that are era appropriate even if that involves a bed swap. I support this with a few figures (some that I painted) to help the scene.

   My first job after graduating high school was at the implement department of a farm supply store. It was located within the small city but it had lots of stuff. We did mill work for cattle feed, had a small general hardware department and we were the local International Harvester dealer. I worked in the tractor repair dept. The business had a spur track to receive box cars of feed grain but no end ramp for flat cars. However we received a carload of new Farmalls and drove them off the side of the car onto a stake body truck and then around the parking lot to the other side of the building where there was a wooden ramp about 3 feet high to unload them from the truck to the ground. I was 18 years old.

   Here is how I illustrated this story now nearly 60 years after the fact. The photographer wanted a better angle to illustrate the action in this scene. So he went into one of Holden City’s tall office buildings, took the elevator to the top floor and his view is shown on the next page. (Note the virtual ramp from car to truck).

   Holden freight station seldom gets shipments like this one, the photographer was lucky to get such a nice overhead view of this shipment of six new John Deere tractors destined for the new dealer out at the edge of town. The first truck is loaded and ready to go – the second one soon will follow. (This ramp from car to truck is a portable plank).

   The freight station is a shortened Bachmann with signs made on the computer and printer, the flat car is an Athearn kit with metal wheels, the tractors are plastic – intended as Christmas tree ornaments, the trucks are Classic Metal Works mini-metals (era appropriate ‘54 Internationals) and two of them have had bed swaps to get a flat bed or stake body. The gravel, grass and blacktop is simply paint. The box car is actually at the Yardley team track in the neighboring town. Things can get cramped and crowded on a small layout.

   This scene was set up at Holden City on the Yardley and Hillton HO scale model railroad. The Camera was a Sony DSC-H70, the image was slightly retouched with Microsoft Paint program to eliminate the base under each figurer.