Building the MTH HO scale, 60' wood deck flatcar with Diecast Masters 1:87th (previously Norscot) Caterpillar D9T Tractor load.


A footnote. Please excuse breaks etc in the text. I'm having problems when correcting typos, where I highlight to remove or add letters or spaces that need correcting. The blue line produced won't go away, and keeps reappearing each time in the same place and just removes following letters if I try to continue.
 
Toot....looking good. I was hunting around for some of those flats to give this a try. Are they a discontinued run? I'm not finding many out there.
 
Toot....looking good. I was hunting around for some of those flats to give this a try. Are they a discontinued run? I'm not finding many out there.
These are from the 2nd run, Mike, the 1st was 10 years ago o_O, I got 5 TTX ones from that run. Trainworld and modeltrainstuff.com (MB Klein) had them recently. This time they have only produced 2 road#'s, instead of the 6 they did before. Klein's don't have any listed but they do show Norfolk Southern ones, but out of stock, which means they will get more. Their's is the best price @ $22.99, MTH is $29.99, Trainworld in between. They seem to have only done a few modern roads this time too.
https://www.modeltrainstuff.com/tra...Cars$253EFlat$2520Cars/filter:custom_scale:HO

The product #'s for the TTX cars are 80-98039 and 80-98040. You can find them on the MTH site with those #'s into the search box, and they have a search also for stockists who have ordered them. This issue has KD #158 scale couplers too, the previous one had #5's.
 
To, continue. After gluing the decks back on, I weathered the wheels and trucks and when dry, refitted them. A caution here, the wheel axles have plastic, rotating bearing caps pressed onto the straight axle ends, I lost one when washing them prior to painting and another when painting. Didn't lose any from that early batch. They are tiny, tiny, tiny. These trucks are all metal with real springs too. The axles pass through the side frames, not clip in like the similar Genesis ones do. So any dismantling appears to involve removing the springs to get the bolter out of the frame, along with removing those caps to get the axles out of the side frames. While I like the attention to ptototypical detail, I think that's a "bridge too far".
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Back now to getting the tractor ready for mounting onto the car. After I did the first of these, way back when, I wondered how I could reproduce the sag in the top part of the Tractor's tracks. I came up with the idea of usind a short piece of 1/16" rosin core solder. Redid the first one by glueing a piece into the groove inside the rubberised plastic tracks and bending it down once the glue had set. Wasn't bad, but the tension in the track pulled them back up again somewhat. I did a second one before putting the chains on with a better result, both times after the tractor was mounted.
This time I decided to use a piece of 1/16" steel, gas welding wire before mounting the tractor.

Cutting the wire to length, just short of the distance between the drive sprocket and front idler wheel
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Bending a kink in it.
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Inserting it into the top track
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How it sits in the track
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Clamping with an aligator clip
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The tricky bit again, thin CA gluing each side of the clip without sticking it to everthing as well.
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Leave it to set overnight.
 
That O scale dozer is something!
Almost 2 pounds weight and metal tracks linked - Holy Cow!
Price commensurate with the scale -
Wish they made an older model before the triangle tracks
 
I thought that the flatcar deck was wood - you telling me it is plastic?
If you do try what I suggested (I was thinking wood) You want to just barely have color in the wash. You want the grain to show - not like it is painted. I am going to shut-up now for fear that I may cause you to try something that will mess up.
You have a beautiful work - and the problems? troubles? that you may have had are more than made up by the appearance of the finished product.

Excellent colors on the wheels and trucks!
 
Looking through the booklet that came with these models from Diecast Masters Co Ltd, they have 3 smaller Dozers of the low track types in the 1:50 range, a D5K2 LPG item#85281, a D7E item#85224 and a D6K XL item#85192. My fav would be the D11T item#85212.
Yes the decks on MTH's cars are gray plastic, painted cream. The Intermountain ones have the actual wood decks. If I could buy just the decks, I'd swap them. I couldn't wait till the morning, here it is, sitting on a car.
The stronger wire has done the job of getting the droop down better
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Once I've got all of these tractors finished, with their tiedown chains and parts boxes, the next in line of the Cat loads, are 5 627G Scrapers, at least they go on in 1 piece, but there are more opportunities for high detailing.
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Prototype
LOOK'IT ALL THEM PIPES AND HOSES
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Seeing I had the Scraper out of it's box and it was too late on Friday to get anywhere with the other Dozer before the next day's running day, I decided to mount the Scraper on the flatcar that had been prepared for the Dozer. A quicker project anyway, being there was no dismantling needed. Fitst thing to do was to lock with CA, the swing of the front cab assembly, as it pivots just behind the operators cab in order to steer.

I used the tray of the display from inside the box to sit it in to keep it straight and spotted some CA fast set glue onto the top pivot point, the pin of which is visible. You could also spot some onto where the slides of the steering rams pivot either side and enter the rams. The purpose is to stop the 2 sections flop about sideways, while you are trying to glue the model to the flatcar's deck. Let that set up firmly. You'll notice while handling the model previously, that it also rotates around that pivot assembly, lower down. Don't glue that yet, because when mounting to the car it may need to adjust to the deck, so all the tyres contact evenly.
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The next thing to do is dirty the tire treads slightly to make it look like the vehicle has been driven to the loading station over a concrete pad. A length of packaging tape, wider than the track of the model is secured, sticky side UP, onto the bench and the model rolled back and forth to apply some of that stickiness onto the tire treads.. Then over the sticky tape (and in order to stop it moving) a piece of paper towelling is placed. I have Pastel sticks I use to create weathering powders but a spread of powder will do as well. I rubbed a mid gray pastel stick along the paper and ran the wheels back and forth over that
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Hope you can see this. Yep. The tread surfaces have been highlighted with the pastels. Carefully handle now so as to not rub it off. You can't see a lot of this because the fenders will cover most of it on this model once it's mounted, but it looks good on front loaders etc
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Now we glue the axles to the chassis to stop the wheels from rolling. Allow to set fully, and it's ready to mount.
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With another clean piece of paper on the bench, just wipe the bottom of the now fixed tires along it lightly to remove some of the pastel. Apply spots of Gel glue to the cleaned areas on the tires, keeping it in away from the outer edges. Turn the model over and avoiding contact with other surfaces :oops:, Hold the model by the centers of the wheels (hub caps) and keeping it as level as possible above the car deck and evenly over it's middle, lower it onto the deck so it's also evenly placed in relation to the car's edges. Check the placement (the Gel sould allow some adjustment movement) and allow to set. Same picture as before, I know. What you can see however, if using one of these MTH cars, the rear wheels center lines up with the center of the TTX logo on the car, which is pretty good as an alignment to place the Scraper in the middle of the deck.



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One little feature point here. Note that iside the Scraper's hopper there is a "wall". This slides back and forth and can be placed anywhere between hard up to the front or the back. I just set it to a position and glued it there for extra visual interest. I'll paint the shiny pivots, it makes a surprisingly big difference to the overall effect. Attaching chains will finish it off.
 
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Welll....,, upward and onward, fore and aft, port and starboard, 3 paces back for every one taken, through hell and highwater, start another one.
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If I can finish this one as quickly as I pulled it apart, I should have another ready to go to the next running day, or night.
 
Just a couple notes. If I were the one responsible for the transport of that 657, I would:
1) Block the wheels both fore and aft.
2) the 'crowd' , as you called 'wall' would be set completely back to protect the ram from the elements.
3) The apron closed, and the 'can' set down, supported on blocks attached to the flatcar.
... but that's just me.
 
Thanks S.H. for your input, any info from those with experience of how this equipment is handled is most welcome. Viewing from 15000 miles away and not seeing them on a train here, limits me to primarily what I can see on the net or youtube. I would never have guessed
crowd, as the name for that sliding piece, but as you now mention it, I can see the logic behind keeping it closed, especially during transportation. I just set it there as artistic license, seemed a waste of an interesting feature and was only discovered just prior to mounting. The Apron I presume is the "flap" at the front (which I have closed) and the 'can' the main containment. I have a couple of photos gleaned from searches that show this machine on a flatcar, one being an OTTX, which is usually assigned to farm machinery and the info I have obtained seems to indicate the reason for the different classification from the HTTX or TTHX types is the weight of the tiedown chains, 3/8" for the OTTX and 1/2" for the heavier duty cars. I also understand that the TTHX designation, although slightly different in appearance, regards mainly the tiedown tracks, has been superseded, and all in that range are now marked as HTTX.

The model's bracings/tiedowns are not finished, nor are the Tractor's shown in this thread. On the "round tuit" list.
This is one of the pics I was using as an example, different number/type of scraper, but close enough
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The one on the OTTX
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Cheers, Ray
 
Awesome thread Toot!
This is another project I have on the back burner, with many others.
I've operated both the D9 and the 627, both were a lot of fun!
The body of the scraper is called the bowl, the flap in front is the apron, and the moving wall is called the ejector.
 



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