New Tenders - Both Scratchbuilt or Modified

The PRR had a special tender that it developed in the hope of extending the range of the K4 by giving it more water capacity. It held 25,000 gallons of water. It was a take off of the tender on the M1a's that held 21,000 gallons of water. They did this by shortening the coal pocket.You can see the impoact by comparing this picture with that of the tender below. It was not really a success so they removed them from the K4 and used them on a variety of engines. They used 10 on the 2-10-0 I1's. They have never been made in O scale. I obtained the drawings for the tender, a set of M1a tender trucks and the usual Grabowski parts (hatch, and drains). I asked Frank Miller to fabricate the tender from this material. It was his last project. Here I have painted it as it appeared in 1956 as it was assigned to an I1. It had had its antenna system removed but the associated equipment box was still on the side of the tender. Frank did a great job and even captured the slant in the side that was on the original. This is going to look good behind the I1 that is in the paint line.

This is the later version of the M1a tender. It is a welded side 210f85a tender with 8 wheel trucks instead of the riveted tender with 6 wheel trucks.  The model is an upgraded Sunset tender that has had an early antenna system installed. This type of arrangement appeared behind some M1's that were given welded tenders during their service lives. The antenna pipe went through the water tank rather than over the deck and down the rear of the tender. They later put the pipe over the deck as an improvement as the pipe was in anther pipe in the water tank - a leakage problem. You can see the antenna appears to be a U-shaped pipe. The model also has Grabowski hatches, antenna details, dog house and drains. It is going to go behind an upgraded, modernized Westside M1, also in the paint shop. It is based on an engine in Don Ball's book on M1's. 

I painted these tenders to get me moving to the complete the painting of the associated engines. I also painted a modified Precision 110 tender (antenna removed) to trail a Precision K4 that had to be remotored and is now in the paint shop also.