MTH, Please fix the "gap" already!

 Looks like some type of pan down under??

http://espee.railfan.net/nonin...10-gene_deimling.jpg

maybe you could add something if you really wanted it? With the vantage point on my RR, it's not a big deal to me. I think they captured the look of the Pacific really well, to me. Seems like they have added extra details.

 I have this one

http://mthtrains.com/content/20-3140-2

The gap doesn't look as big as that rendering shows.

Hmmm, now that you got me looking at it closely, I may have to add a pan too. I hadn't noticed it before as a big deal. I couldn't get the camera down low enough.

It looks like that (1) the ash pan could be lower (or one installed) and (2) the firebox is too long (probably in order to get the motor inside).

There's also possibly some piping that could be added to fill the gap, something a modeler can do if he/she wants a small project to fill some time.

Compare that area above on the Lionel Blue Comet counter part from a few years ago, and there is much less of a gap there.  Now some may say, other things are wrong on the Lionel model, which is probably true, but the gap is not so offending, and it's not just on this MTH steam locomotive, but most of them that MTH makes.  So much so, that usually, I'll pass on the MTH version for some other brand, since I like to look at eye level from the side where it's most noticeable.

There have been a few MTH steam locomotives where they did a great job in that area, but the models are few.  Probably this is reusing the much of the older tooling so the problem is still there.

MTH may or may not be the worse about the "gap" - and I doubt it - but you have to have

room for movement when we demand 1/4" scale sized steam locomotives to handle

curves that some big HO articulateds would find tight. The same goes for my pet peeve:

the too-small front truck wheels on Hudsons, Pacifics, 4-8-4's and so on (but solvable

by my whine: the loco costs so much; couldn't we have TWO trucks? One right and one

wrong???)

On top of our tight little curves - and I'm talking about you too, Mister "072" - we all

too often expect these things to accept the absolutely abysmal trackwork skills dis-

played by some owners (and by some owners, I mean me, and many others).

Try a 3-rail 3rd Rail brass steamer, especially the earlier ones, based on primarily 2-rail DNA; as often as not they are, out of the box, helpless on a typical 3-rail layout. Their

tolerances are very unforgiving. I've had to Moto-Tool more than one of them in discrete

places - and I'm 072.

So, MTH and the rest could do a bit better (the front truck wheels), but all in all their

designers do an amazing job of balancing accurate appearance and making a hippopotamus

dance Swan Lake.

About those wheels, again: the MTH Clinchfield Challenger front truck wheels are much better in appearance than Lionel's silly little Challenger front truck wheels. Not scale, but

better. Why would that be, Lionel? 

That is done intentionally so that you do not notice the even larger gap between the engine and the tender.

LOL.  They sell those new wireless drawbars that come in different sizes to adjust that, I thought?  It needs go around the curves or it won't be much use.

Yeah, let's talk about the Olympic Broad Jump gap (see Lionel non-streamlined

J3a for an example; love the loco, fixed the gap, somewhat) - often far wider than

necessary for operation on the specified curves. Cheap locos - OK; expensive ones,

please pay attention or give us 2 drawbars.

On RTR sets, I just shorten the drawbar on the the tender or the locomotive or both.  It's harder to do on Legacy / TMCC engines but not impossible.  On some of my newer Lionel engines they have that V design for the tender / locomotive connection that holds it tight on straights and lets it have more slack on curves which works really well for me so that gap is no longer a big issue, but I hear what you saying.

On MTH newer steam locomotives you can get smaller drawbars but they are separate sale. May be they should be in the box next to the scale coupler so we can all adjust to our tastes and layout needs.