TOM - The JD Commons is right downtown in Moline, just west of the I-74 Twin Bridges, right across from "The Mark Civic Center". I figured all tours would end there so you can buy caps, jackets, t-shirts, models, etc. They have an outdoor display of some equipment, gift shop of course, and a recreation of a 1950's JD dealer. And a lot of places to "buy refreshments" for the trip home.
A lot of the stuff from the entry pavillion out at Corp. HQ on JD Road was moved there.
Same here, no green/yellow around here either, but I do have a 1/32nd scale replica of a 872G road grader in IH 483B Yellow. I won't mention how I aquired that.
NORM B. - What the article didn't say was how OLD the guy's fork truck was. If I had to guess, I'd guess 15-20 yrs. IH Melrose was an INTERESTING plant. One side of the main aisle was 6-cyl. engine production, last 30 yrs was All diesel, D312/360, 414, 436, 466, 530, 570 CID. The other side of the aisle was ALL crawler tractor production. Not sure about now but back in the 1980's one side of the aisle was Navistar (engines) and the other side was DRESSER Industries (crawlers). If WYATT C. drops in he has more current info since he worked at another Dresser plant about 6-8 yrs ago. I "THINK" crawler production may have been moved up to Libertyville but not positive. Melrose also does ALL IH engine design and testing. One of SON's old college buddy's works in the dyno lab there. Some of the things IH did to test the VT365 or 6.4L Ford PSD's was CRAZY.