At Altoona, I stumbled across what appeared to be a nicely painted never run Yulim brass light Mikado for a nice price. But it was missing the tender.
At home, I mated it up with a Bachmann medium USRA tender with a Soundtraxx TSU-1100 sound decoder. It had a B&O (large!) number on the cab, so I lettered up the tender appropriately. Note pick up is via the tender only.
I ran this on the Bantrak FreemoN layout at the October Great Scale show.
At this show, I was able to score a Model Power Vanderbilt tender. While not a great match for a B&O vandy, it's, well, a vandy. At home I realized this tender has each truck picking up power from one rail. I ended up 3D printing new bolsters for Bachmann tender trucks. Since the power risers on these trucks would show poorly, I clipped them off and hardwired to the pick ups and fed them into the tender via some holes I drilled in the very bottom of the tender.
I glued some copper strips on the inside of the tender. I started to pack the tender with as much lead as possible, using lead strips with sticky stuff on them meant for tennis rackets. Note, the pick up is still only the tender and the Vandy tender isn't as heavy as the standard tender, so we'll see how it runs in the field. I haven't tried yet to run a wire back to the tender from the locomotive for the left rail. To get right rail from the locomotive, I would have to craft some sort of a wiper on two or more of the drivers.
When I had been installing the decoder and lights, I realized the boiler front wasn't soldered on and would pop out. While some B&O Mikes had centered headlights, most didn't. Researching lots of photos, I used Tinkercad to make parts one by one and do a little rivet counting. Since most of my B&O fleet is in the later years, I opted for the number board to be below the headlight with the B&O herald on the boiler center.
I provided slots to hold a SMB LED and holes for the wires. An Anycube Photon was used for the prints. This project was a great lesson in the realities of scaling down for a workable print. The headlight is slightly too large. The marker lights were too fragile in their actual location and had to be moved inboard and even then they aren't as sturdy as I would like. I cadded more detail then the print would show, but maybe one day that will come in handy. 50 or 60 prints later, I had something reasonable.
By this time I had removed the extra large numbers on the cab and repainted the boiler and cab. I made a mix of Tamiya black, grey and silver for the smoke box. A look at late B&O steam color photos shows everything from almost black, dark silver and light silver smoke boxes. Apparently there wasn't much of a standard when it came to mixing the graphite paint.
I had carefully cut the bell off the original boiler front, then more carefully filed it to fit on the top of the boiler. Not being brave - and lacking a good iron to solder it in place - I used Shoe Goo to attach the bell. It seems to be holding just fine. I had used all the B&O heralds on the Gold Metal Model sprue I had and new old stock of these sprues are unobtanium. I painted a blank round herald and put a Microscale decal on it. I didn't like this look, so I got the idea to ask if others had GMM extras in the trading post.
@Rasputen was kind enough to send me four.
This is much better! Along the way, I cut off the footboards and centered cow catcher on the original model. I 3D printed later style wide footboards. I also put a MTL 1015 coupler so if need be, this locomotive can obtain its rightful place as a pusher of coal. This in turn greatly limited the movement of the pony truck. I drilled a 2nd hole in the connecting piece to shift the truck back about one wheel length. This model isn't going to make 9-inch radius turns anytime soon, but it will do about 12-inches. Decaling the engine number on all three number boards was an experience in patience.
Does anyone make decals of steam locomotive builder's plates?
The B&O USRA Light Mikados, Q-3's, usually had standard tenders. B&O was known to move tenders around, but I wasn't successful in finding a photo of a Q-3 with a Vandy tender. These are usually Q-4's. But the Q-4 Mikes were actually a non-USRA Heavy Mikado that had a PRR style trailing truck. However, the 50 strong Q-7 class of light Mikados were delivered with Vandy tenders. I found a photo of 4874 that I liked, so that's what I've gone with.
I have a BLI first run Mikado. Assuming the boiler front pops out of it, it will likely get a similar treatment. As a B&O modeler, it has always been a rub that so many N scale steamers come with centered headlights. I was happy to see when BLI announced their new 2-8-0 that it has a raised headlight. I have been humored by dozens and dozens of comments, including in the most recent BLI newsletter about those wanting a centered headlight. Trust me, I feel your pain.
Bob
