Here's an odd thing, and I can assure you that you've never seen anything like it before, because only one exists and I have it (and, you might add, that's my problem). I've always been somewhat drawn to the peculiar lines of the Caterpillar 830M scraper-wheel dozer, and one day I was farting around with some HO scale stuff when the idea of scratchbuilding something akin to an 830M (but not necessarily an 830M) occurred to me.
The four-wheel tractor is a fairly crappy HO scale loader (more a toy than a model). I reversed and detailed the cab, added a dozer blade from an old Woodland Scenics dozer, and added hydraulic cylinders that were left over from building a Kibri Liebherr scrap hander (Kibri kits aren't cheap, by any means, but they tend to leave one with lots of spare parts). I scratchbuilt the scraper bowl out of sheet plastic (mostly cut from old Swiffer boxes) and odds and ends from the scrap box, though I did make a mold of an HO-scale MAN eight-wheel-drive truck (by Roco) and cast four rear tires for the thing (the rear tires are duals).
After adding more Kibri hydraulic parts and various bits and pieces, I painted it Testor's "Interior Green" (which I thought was a nice and fairly vivid "construction color" that wasn't yellow for a change) and added "Koehne" stickers cut from an old Kibri sticker sheet.
Now I just need to build the railroad layout to put it on!
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