RON - We've discussed Farmall here together before, your visits would have been before my time there, I was still in HS in '71, but started there in the shop in the fall of '76.
Those trash carts were noisy, steel wheels on the concrete floors or the 4"x6" wood blocks set on end and covered in tar in the heavy traffic ares like the main aisle thru the center of the plant!
By '76 the switch to Hydro's was complete, but you're correct, they were mostly all older models, think they were all WF's, 129/149's & a couple Q/L's.
I worked @ E.Moline for six weeks being a helper on an 8 ft Cincinatti metal cutting shear in the steel stores out next to the river bank in back, started there in Jan '77 till March. When they'd open the big truck doors to let semi's with steel in/out I could see Bettendorf across the river. One night I remember the Forman walking around pouring water on out lifts of steel sheets and timing how long it took to freeze, normally 4-5 seconds, it was about 25-35 degrees where I worked. We'd make BIG sheets of steel into small strips on out shear, start with 4 ft X 8 ft sheets and make 8 ft strips only inches wide.
At FARMALL the ambulance was on an IH pickup chassis, the fire truck was an IH R-series, the big end loader for feeding coal to the power plant in back for most of the plant's electricity, and all it's steam, hot water & compressed air was loaded with an IH Hough end loader, plus the tractors used to tow the tractors out of the plant to the west yard after they were driven off the end of the finish line, and then down to Kohler Releasing (not related to Kohler engines) were ALL big Hydro's, H100, H966/1066's. They all had cabs, and a full rack of ten 100# suitcase weights PLUS the added bracket with a full set of 4100-series frt weights under the suitcases. The 3-pt top link was replaced with a big hyd cylinder, about 4" bore X 8" stroke and a little lift platform with a pivoting saddle caught the underside of the frt axle, they could raise the frt of a new tractor off the ground and tow it around like a 2-whl cart. And the guard force all drove Scouts. IH had a real nice lease program for Managers & Supervisors, they could lease a brand new Scout every 3 yrs for about a third of what the purchase payments would have been. I suspect 75% of the eligible people leased them. Typically they were "Loaded", 345 V8, A/T, power everything, tilt, cruise, A/C, and the FUNKIEST Plaid upholstery known to man!
FARMALL was a GREAT place to work. I had my Management Interviews the last day or two before the end of the Big Strike in '79/'80. If the Ag equip. market hadn't tanked so bad I'd have been a Forman.