Lobaugh Mikado 2023

[bob turner]

Hard to tell them apart - note the cab forward bulkhead:



Tender is a genuine Lobaugh, but with my embossed sides and PSC trucks. The trucks were bargains right up into the 21st century - $23, and easy assembly. No wheels.

[bob turner]

This one is on the cover of one of those neat Monte Vista Publishing soft-cover SP Steam Pictorials. I had no idea the SP ever had an Elesco Feedwater eyebrow on a Mikado, but here it is. Tender was converted from one of those El Paso North Eastern coal burners. I don't think this particular tender has ever been available in O Scale.

The model is from a virgin kit, discovered in a collection in maybe the 1990s along with a Mountain. The kits even had the 1940 bottles of paint, and exquisitely preserved blueprints. I, of course, could not leave them in that condition, and both are now fully assembled.

[R.K. Maroon]

I like that El Paso and Northeastern version. As I understand it, you started with a standard Lobaugh SP 2-8-2 kit. You modified the tender and added the Elasco feedwater heater to match the prototype. Were there other modifications or was the El Paso & Northeastern version really that close otherwise to the Lobaugh kit?

[bob turner]

How did I miss responding to this? Three months ago? I must have been drifting. The tender is entirely scratchbuilt except for trucks and couplers. The locomotive is stock Lobaugh, except for domes and feedwater system, and of course cab wrapper. In my defense, Lobaugh did display models for early catalogs with rivets on the cab.

Oh, and that trailing truck and tail beam always have to be changed - but then, again, Lobaugh did the same thing for his display models. I think I included a shot of that on page one - if not, stand by . . .

Also, I will be bothering you with another Mikado, about to take shape. Maybe by early August, depending on how much bar rail I have left from that twelve foot piece I bought two decades ago when it was six bucks a foot.

[bob turner]

Yes - here is the 1939 catalog photo:



Note rivets on the tank and cab, and the tail beam under the Hodges truck. I use exclusively the CLW or Pearce/Stevenson truck, although my two earliest Mikes have the original Lobaugh or something close. This area of the Mike is a lot like the PA nose - I am a bit OCD'd about it.