From Indiana Jones to Garden Railways

One of my all time favorite movies are 'Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the lost Ark', and I think that's the movie I've seen most times ever (in my youth). One of the best action scenes from that movie, which is also considered as one of the most epic ones and rated as one of the best ever action scenes is 'the (truck) desert chase'-scene. - No CGI and the music is perfectly synchronised to the scenes:

One of the key and main items in this scene is the German Cargo Truck. In my (early) youth I thought it was a 'Germanized' fictional vehicle, like many (German) vehicles from periodic movies were at the time. I've later found that it was closer to it's prototype than I believed. 

The Prototype 

The prototype and inspiration for the truck in the movie was the (actual) Mercedes Benz LG3000.

Years of production: 1935-1938

Overall production: 7434

Engine: Diesel Daimler-Benz OM67 95hp/2000rpm, 

Weights:

Open cargo body: own - 5700kg, gross: 8500kg

Closed cargo body: own - 6000kg

Maximal trailer weight: 2000kg

Maximal speed: 53 km/h

Fuel tank capacity: 112 Ltr.

Fuel consumption (Diesel):

30 Ltr/100km (highway), 45 Ltr/100km (offroad)

Ford depth: 600mm

These trucks were used by the German Wehrmacht and Reichsbahn (and others) and some of them were transferred to Norway and used by the German occupation forces between 1940 - 45. These photos shows a truck being loaded onto a ship in Danzig for transport to Norway 1941:

These photos shows LG3000 trucks in Norway:

The Mercedes-Benz LG3000 was later developed into the more famous 2 axle L3000-series with steel cab, which was produced between 1938 - 44 in a number of 33 265.

The Movie Truck

The earlier 'LG3000' truck used in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the lost Ark' however was a faithful representation mocked upon an American GMC CCKW truck:

3 such 'replica' trucks were made by Charlie Mann in UK, 2 which he kept in his own museum. More photos of them can be seen on the Miliblog:

The Movie Truck from 'Raiders of the lost Ark':

The Model 

Soon the Cargo Truck from Indiana Jones became a popular toy, and an icon to market Indiana Jones toys:

This was supposedly planned for 2025, but cancelled:

Both Kenner and Hasbro later made models of the truck to about 1:18 scale to match their action figures:

Kenner:

Hasbro:

Of the 2 different latter models I think the Hasbro model has captured the 'movie truck' and the original LG3000 best. Anyhow both of them has become 'Collectors Items' and costs hundreds of $$, ££ or €€ (in various conditions)... 

- Especially in pristine condition and with a box.

For Garden Railways 

Being 1:18 scale they're both pretty close to my 1:19 scale military Garden Railways and military train rakes. So it would be nice to have one as a 'car load'. On the other hand; Paying hundreds of $$, ££ or €€ for a single model (to only be used as a load) was out of the question. They are also very unusual in Norway so even more $, £, € would have to be added to the shipping costs. 

One day I was coincidentally browsing a Norwegian online market when I spotted an add with not only one, but three unboxed Hasbro Cargo Trucks. The biggest surprise was that the seller was only charging £ 11,70/ $ 15,59/ or € 13,53 each, which I considered as a real find for these 'collectors items'. I didn't mind if they were unboxed (as I'm not going to use the box anyway). I've initially only wanted one to use as a carload for my military garden trains, but for the price requested it was a no-brainer to buy all three of them:

The seller was really fast sending them too, so it looked like I'd be able to load a car or two with them for our next Garden Railway running session coming up very soon. When receiving them I saw that they were not in pristine condition, and it looked like they had been heavily used as outdoor toys as they're made of durable plastic. I'm not sure if they'd belonged to an extremely lucky kid, or just another adult outdoor military modeller as my self. I didn't mind their condition either as I didn't buy them to collect but to use as military train loads, and these only looked perfectly weathered the natural way:

One of them was missing a headlight, so I sourced a free STL-file for one on Cults 3D and just 3D-printed a new headlight for the truck:

To see if they would fit any of my (mostly LGB) flatcars, I tried to load them on some flatcars I painted earlier this year:

Being used outdoors as toys they haven't aged well, and they show some color alterations. I haven't quite decided yet to repaint them or just keep them as is as such alterations also occurs in real life (perhaps someone has some advice or suggestions in the comment section?). Besides I do have little time for painting and hobbies these days as a little gardening seems required, and there are perfect weather conditions for such now.

Time will show... 

🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛

Blog PostScript 

What a blog coincidence happened today. While I was posting this today Mark at the 'Man of Tin' blog was posting another blogpost on Raiders miniatures used by Steven Spielberg in a scene mock up, and on the Snap-Kit set.

I've found even more photos of MPC's Snap-kit with painted miniatures which can be seen on this Facebook page. 

A photo from the Facebook page

Give and Take - Combining 2 LGB wagons

Last year I bought several G-scale LGB wagons cheaply second hand for turning them into military rollingstock to run in my 16mm scale German Heeresfeldbahn trains or British WDLR trains. Some of these wagons were pretty 'scruffy'. For this project I pulled 2 wagons out of the pile of well used wagons. Both of them actually belongs to LGB's 'Toy Train Series':

Firstly I couldn't keep that colorful livery on the tank car in a military train where most cars are grey-ish. Besides I didn't like the tank's off center position on the wagon nor the brakeman's platform. -I already have a tank car with a brakeman's platform and wanted this to be different:

The second wagon is actually one of those I least like from the LGB-range and I actually bought it just to get the metal wheels it came with (as they costs about twice as much new than whole this purchase together). I toyed with the idea to replace the wheels with some plastic ones after I removed the metal ones and keep the wagon, give it a repaint and use it. But it was in a very sorrow condition covered in thick house paint, missing a coupling, buffer and it's brakeman's platform railings + one step:

While I was working on this project I found a drawing of a similar wagon in a book about German Heeresfeldbahnen in WWII, and decided to try to get it back in running condition again and use it with my Heeresfeldbahn trains:

As I wrote earlier, both these wagons are from LGB's inexpensive 'Toy Train Series' originally aimed for children's entry to this scale/gauge. I guess LGB made these wagons based upon the same chassis or parts to keeps things 'cheap'. This means that the chassis are interchangeable between the two wagons, meaning that the open plank wagon can be placed on the chassis with the brakeman's platform and steps and the tank car vice versa. Due to this I decided to keep the open plank wagon and remodel it. First I painted both 'tops' in 2 different gray shades...

...before assembling them on the their opposite chassis:

The tank could easily be moved and fixed in a position more to the center of the wagon:

Then I painted the details and gave them a light weathering:

Ironically, while working on this project LGB/ Märklin re-released the same (Toy Train) tank car in grey as one of their 2026 news after been out of production for a while. It has nice lettering and numbering, but costs about 4 times more than my own project. 

On the open plank wagon I picked out some individual boards in different colours to give a hint that some of them have been replaced. Bars, frames and hinges were painted black and everything was given a wash of black and rust and finally drybrushed to look aged:

Since this is the wagon I was initially least found of in the LGB-range, I decided to add some load to it to make it more interesting. It had to be some kind of military cargo and preferably some German ones as I found a German prototype for this wagon. The load was not to be permanently fixed as I wanted it to be interchangeable. A German tank would make a spectacular load, but this was wrong kind of wagon for that. - Besides loads like that are way too heavy and large for narrow gauge railways. But what about parts for a tank that would need to replaced from time to time? Parts like an engine? The Maybach HL230 engine was used in Tiger I, Tiger, II, Panther, Jagdpanther and Jagdtiger tanks and on Thingiverse I found a free kit I re-scaled to 1:19 scale and 3D-printed:

I made 3 kits as this is how many this wagon can carry in both volume and weight (max 5000 kg):

I made a cargo frames for them so they would sit level and fit snuggle into the railway wagon:

Then they were secured to the frame:

I guess this load depicts well used engines going back from the front, or newly overhauled engines going back to the front. Perhaps for a coming (panzer)  offensive? 

So by combining these 2 'Toy Train' wagons by LGB I didn't just get more prototypical wagons for my growing collection of military railway cars, but I also did so in the most budget way possible. So can you, as these Toy Trains wagons are usually very available and cheap second hand. 

If you have rollingstock from LGB, have a look what chassis are the same, how they are 'altered' from the factory and what kind of wagons they fit for. This will allow you to very easily alter and personalize your own LGB stock. What I did in this case was probably the most simple of them.