As a kid there were two engines I had a dream of owning one day - a scale Daylight 4449 (my favorite engine ever) and a Lionel Legacy 765. I fulfilled my Daylight goal with an MTH Premier 4449 in the summer, and partially fulfilled my berk goal with this Lionel Berkshire a few months later, though I had to settle for RF&P since the Nickel Plate version is popular and therefore hard to come by. I was very satisfied with my berk, but here and there I had subtle urges to add a small NKP flair to it. First came flying number boards on the front end, then a yellow painted bell, windows, and handrails, until finally I went all in, painting the smokebox and firebox black and adding a non functional mars light. There’s still a few glaring features that don’t make this fully accurate NKP berk, including the tube pilot, exposed lead truck, and obvious RF&P markings but I’m okay with it, and now I call this engine a “frankenberk” because it has characteristics of multiple Berks from different railroads.
Painting the smokebox was a bit scary as I’d never attempted something like that before especially on a $1500 dollar model, and while there a few blotches here and there I’m more than satisfied with it. The numberboards were purchased separately from Lionel and I made custom inserts simply with a piece of styrene and numbers made on a Microsoft Word document. Everything else that was was painted, including the driver tires, windows, handrails, bell, and the white on the pilot was done with acrylic paint that can be bought from Walmart for less than a dollar. The mars light is from Lionel’s FEF model, but I replaced the red lens with a clear one as it’s more suitable for a Berkshire. The green flags on the front are made from sheet styrene cut to size and glued in place behind the class lights.
You might wonder why I wouldn’t just wait until an NKP model comes on the market for me to buy but I personally enjoy performing these kind of modifications to my engines and having one of a kind models that I can say “hey I did that!” I keep my eyes open constantly on eBay and other second hand options for a NKP berk which I would love to have in addition to this model. Thanks for looking!
Michael
This is how the engine looked out of the box, save for the white on the pilot truck.
