Model This!

That sequence is utterly amazing! That smacking sound you just heard was my jaw hitting the desktop.

-- Ray

"Ray Haddad" wrote

Well, I'll tell you; I've run more than a couple of backhoes in my time, and I frankly thought the pics must be fakes until I looked at them closely a second and third time.

I wouldn't try that trick myself on a bet!

-Pete

It's not your run-of-the-mill backhoe, it's been modified to suit the task. If you look at the first couple stills, you'll see the brackets (for lack of a better term) on the front bucket and right behind the front wheels. Here's a link to the "Cartopper" web site:

Stevert

"Stevert" wrote

I know. That was what I noticed when I watched the sequence the second and third times.

-Pete

Thanks for that link - it's better to know it's a regularly available mod, not the inspired shade tree mod I initially thought it was.

Imagine if the lawyers for whoever that backhoe operator works for saw that stunt. Or an OSHA inspector for that matter.

Hmm, checking the model railroading magazine index, I see that Trains did a story on this in the July 2004 issue ("How does a backhoe climb atop a gondola"), but I could have sworn that Model Railroader itself did a photo-article much earlier - perhaps it was in one of the various back-of-issue columns.

Yes they did. Sometime in the 1980s or 1990s