Has anyone adapted a Model Power Vandy tender to the Kato Mike? The issue as I see it would be the drawbar. it should be easy enough to adapt a Kato drawbar, but kato seems to be perpetually out of them.
The Austin Steam train Asso. has an old Santa Fe Mike and I’d like to model it. Model power offers that exact loco with the correct number, but I’m not really big on MP. Parts source?
Thanks
Bob
Many have discussed fitting the MP Vanderbilt to either the Kato mikado or the Bachpersonn SPECTRUM consolidated.
The problem is that the MP tender has pick up on only half the wheels. The Kato and Bachmann have all wheel pick up. Using the MP on either locomotive would seriously compromise the electrical pick up.
Someone did mention seeing someone’s trying to run a B-mann SPECTRUM with a Vanderbilt at an N-TRAK meet. He said it ran terribly and the owner had to make a yard queen out of it.
I did not know that ATSF had anything with a Vanderbilt tender. If you want to make an oil burner out of a Kato mikado, you can buy oil bunkers, including an ATSF type oil bunker from UltimateNscale. Check the website of Panzerschiffe.
It is easy to work with these. You paint the oil bunker. The coal load pops out of the Kato USRA Standard tender. You replace the coal load with the oil bunker; all that it takes is a little bit of Walthers to hold it to the tender.
Opps… My mistake… The MP version is a Southern Pacific.