Rob Bennetts provided the photo below of an inexpensive shovel he obtained.  This started an international 7/8" conversion race.  The results follow.

Editor

Rob's conversion is shown below:


However, having built a shovel for his railroad, Rob had to build something to shovel stuff into and here it is.


But then he added a sand pit and a hopper to load the sand into a new fleet of cars. 


Carl Brummer caught the fever and added a rail mounted conversion and a work car to his empire.





Eric Christianson got into the act by adding the derrick car below to his railroad. It is made from wood, bronze, zinc, renboard, brass, and steel. With castings by Ozark and trucks by Steve King.


Jeff Phistner also modified one of the plastic crane toys and his result is shown below.