Bob Schleicher (Model Ralroading/RailModel Journal) was very fond of a photo of the prototype DT&I car with a load of Ford tractors and used it often for his "Wish List" articles. One day I got a Walthers flier that had a drawing of a WIKING tractor that looked an awful like those same tractors. I went online to order them but found that they were "out of stock - backorder." Normally I don't play that game but since I needed 10 for the load and this was my chance to save some money on them, I bit the bullet and submitted the order. It took a few months to get them but they finally showed up.
These were undecorated gray models and easily disassembled so that I could paint them red/gray/black. I mounted them on a 70-ton flatcar kitbashed from two Athearn models (the top car in the photo). What I didn't know at the time, the Wiking models are actually Ferguson tractors, not Fords. The only real difference is that the exhaust pipe on the Canadian-built Fergusons is mounted vertically, while on the Fords it runs horizontally along the frame. Other than I knew that when I took the model to an RPM meet I'd hear "You know those are Fergusons, not Fords" the real problem was that those delicate exhaust pipes broke off every time I handled the car. When Intermountain came out with their 70-ton flatcar I decided to redo the load. I modified the tractors by moving the exhaust pipes along the frame thus solving both problems.
Even by getting a "sale price" on the Wiking tractors, it was a pretty expensive load (I used to refer to the original version as my "$90 load on a $10 flatcar") but I was only making one of them.
