Allis Chalmers and the Railroad

It's cold outside. The arctic swirl is still around. So it's time to do some indoor model railroading.
Little Porter loads a lot of Matchbox and Hot Wheels trucks and cars onto my trains,
but the delicate items I have store until he grows up.

I remember visiting the John Deere works at Ottumwa, Iowa.
Farm machinery design is a balance between strength and light weight and cost.
And it also had to survive the trip from the factory. A branchline of the Wabash came into Ottumwa, Iowa, across a river.
And they would supply some really old flatcars for loading, not in good condition.
At least once, farm equipment fell through the timber deck during the trip out, and rested on the steel frame.

And during Winter, I finally processed some pictures from last summer from the farm toy museum in Dyersville, Iowa.
There's lots of old farm toys of the red, green, and orange brands like the real ones.
My dad didn't own any Allis Chalmers orange equipment, but some neighbors did.
Where ever the real farm equipment was sold, there were toy models for sale, too. Us kids had to have as much farm equipment as Dad.
We wore ours out 'farming', but at least some people saved something for the museum.

There's thousands of toys on display, but what was really unique for me was a model of the Laporte combine harvester works.
Someone modeled the factory, with workers and the assembly line.

This is maybe G-scale size.

And the combines are bundled up into compact sizes and loaded on flatcars.

Do an Internet search for Allis Chalmers in Laporte , Indiana,
and that should bring up an historical society that started in June 2013.

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wrote Feb, 2014