I have to thank my train buddy BarstowRick for this one. I remember him always saying "If you look long and hard enough you can find a prototype for anything." As I usaully do at night before bed...as I am unwinding for the night...I check out the Flagstaff Virtual Railfan camera. I always slide the slider all the way to the left...a 12 hour rollback on the video. I then slowly slide it to the right until I see the Amtrak train come in...usually around 9:30ish PM. Always looking for something that might catch my eye. Today was the jackpot ! At around the 11:30AM mark this morning I catch a quick glimpse of something ! I back the video up again...slide it slowly forward...until I am close to what I spotted...and let the video roll again. Sure enough I wasnt hallucinating !! There...coming down the rails was THIS..... Like I say...I GOTTA model this 'thing' boogieing down the rails !!!!
So, are the backhoe's treads turning the rail wheels? If so, then I guess the treads are running in reverse?
Oh gosh, he's at it again. And I get blamed, Sure enough he wants to model a high rail cat. Aiiyiiyii LOL Go for it!
Not sure. I replayed that video more than a few times...that thing was going 30-40 mph !!! Just looked at 6 different still frames...the track shoes looked like they never moved.
This could be helpful to get the project started. https://www.lemkecollection.de/de/Uebersicht/Spur-N/Liebherr-A922-Rail-2-Wege-Bagger-m.-Tiefloeffel And you could borrow the tracks from this one. https://www.lemkecollection.de/de/U...r-Compact-Ketten-Bagger-m.-Boeschungsschaufel Carter
With some of the micro chassis out there you can do it - I've done a working Burro crane that runs really well as well as my Trackmobile - but if there's one lesson I've learned it's that pickup is EVERYTHING on a tiny chassis. The only cure for both of them was marrying them to something - anything - to increase electrical pickup - a 40' flatcar on Kato caboose trucks for the Burro, and a 'hot' truck under a scale test car for the trackmobile. The advantage to the Burro was that I hollowed out a Railway Express Miniatures pewter casting, and it was HEAVY, so the 4 wheels was actually good. You need weight if at all possible, look at pewter kits. For the micro 4-wheel chassis, check out Plaza Japan. For this, one of the vertical motor centered in the middle should work, note that some of the designs only power one axle. The Modemo TU-4T was what I used, it worked, but the wheels were poor quality and I swapped out with Kato 11-105 wheels. I use a TU-7A on 25-tonners but put in a better Kato motor. This might be good with a TU-16A drive, could work. Focus on pickup and weight, good luck.
Looks like it is equipped with some sort of grapple. Not what we usually think of for removing or inserting such as ties. So I wonder what use?
N Scale Norscot CAT 315CL Excavator Metal / Plastic K13649 https://www.ebay.com/itm/N-Scale-No...873265?hash=item56d6428d71:g:UtIAAOSwCbJeUIpB Sumner
The last month or so, the small city of Skykomish, Wa has had lots of snow dumped in the small BNSF yard there and they have been using one of these for a couple weeks for clearing the snow out. Cool thing is the Skykomish Railcam on Youtube has a front row seat to the operator using it! Most of the snow has melted away now, but if it snows again, BNSF will pull it back again.