Northern Pacific W-3 Class Mikado with Doghouse Tender in Z

I did one of the GHQ W-3 Mikado kits on N Scale, and it is my favorite steamer in N, but I wanted one in Z, so I took to bashing a Marklin CB&Q Mikado and came up with this:

It took me 2 weeks to build, with only a few hours scratchbuilding the tender, but the locomotive was more time consuming.

The tender was easy enough, following plans from the Classic Steam Era NP book.

A prototype Tender

But the locomotive needed quite a bit of detail enhancements to catch the flavor of the W-3 Class. There is still a lot more I can do, but I'm happy at this for now.

Here is an updated shot showing the cab sunshade.

A Prototype Fireman's side

This is before I added the canvas cab sun shade and rear cab winter curtain, which will hide the DCC decoder which I still need to add. The shell was raised .020" to accommodate the decoder fitting inside the cab, leaving the tender for more important stuff like Tantalum Caps.

See the difference the cab sunshade and curtain make in the model?

A prototype Engineer's Side

Smokebox and Pilot detail