David Johnson's friend Arlan Tietel's model railroad includes the Minneapolis-Moline tractor plant in Hopkins, Minnesota. There are no Minneapolis-Moline tractor models in 1/87 scale, so he purchased several Wiking Porsche tractors as stand-ins. They are about the right size and have similar outlines to the Minneapolis-Moline 335 which was manufactured from 1956 into the early 1960s. Arlan asked David to paint them Harvest Gold. Not being one to take the easy way, Dave created a mold master for the distinctive MM grille and resin cast it. Decals were produced on his home computer.   

The model railroad scenes were modeled by Arlan. The factory scene at bottom shows all 10 tractors staged for loading at the dock. When a flatcar arrives it will be loaded then taken to the rail yard in Minneapolis for placement on a train. In the delivery scene below the train has arrived at the end of the line in Watertown, South Dakota and the flatcar is being set out at the unloading dock. All of these operations physically occur in miniature on the model railroad. David says he had the good fortune of operating this train and took the delivery photo between switching moves.

Posted April 3, 2014