Chicago Great Western L3 Mikado
By Davy Cormack
The CGW ( Chicago Great Western) , had 10 USRA light Mikados. They were numbered from 750 to 759. The last survived in service up to 1950. I have only been able to find 2 photographs of these engines so far.
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No 750, the target for this project |
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No 752. |
My reason for starting this project is that while ordering 1/29th scale MOPAC decals from Mr. Tom Stolte of Oddball decals oddballdecal@lvnworth.com for a future MOPAC P73 Pacific project, I noticed that he did steam decals for the CGW and asked him to put in a set of those with the Mopac order, having no idea if/when or for what I would use them. However as I started to investigate the history of the USRA light Mikados with Aristocraft due to release their model soon, I came upon the CGW variant of these machines. The Aristocraft Mikado we are told will be released with with Vanderbilt tenders and the tenders currently fitted to the Aristo Pacifics. In real life the USRA lights were fitted with USRA standard tenders, many of which were modified in umpteen different ways by the various roads which used them over the years.
The tender fitted to the Aristo Pacifics is not a "standard" type. It appears to be modeled on a pretty rare B&O/Baldwin variant (see B&O Presidents).
As I had a spare tender lying around from another project for which I had to build a completely new tender, I decided to make a start to a CGW light Mikado in advance of the Aristocraft release, even if it was only getting the tender ready.
 | Tender Modifications - in this section Davy will start with an Aristocraft Pacific tender. He will shorten the tender, replace the rolled bunker sides with straight bunker sides, and make other modifications to make it more consistent with the prototype. |