Tough Crowd. What other train manufacturer/importer is adding features like this to their locomotives?
I'd be interested to see what you would come up with as features that are not already on this locomotive. If not the coal load, then what? Not being argumentative, but what feature would you make.
A waving engineer? A non prototypical swinging bell? Exploding boiler?
Seriously though throw some ideas out. Maybe one will get traction.
OK, here are some suggestions:
1) When offering "smoke blow-down" effects, it would be nice if the feature was done correctly, i.e. the UP Wilson Blowdown Separator system exhausts steam out of the top, forward of the cab, and exhausts dirty/sludgy water/steam out of a chute under the Engineer's side of the cab.
2) Reversing valve gear linkage, so the link drops down for forward movement and moves up for reverse movement. This feature would be VERY visible while a model is moving slowly, stopping, and backing up.
3) Much more prototypical spacing between the tender and the engine. Even better would be that fantastic adjustable drawbar arrangement Lionel developed for the the Milwaukee S3 4-8-4 models.
4) Some sort of "molded rubber tube" assembly between the engine & tender to represent the stoker tube on coal burning steam locomotive models originally equipped with stokers.
5) Fully rounded boilers/smokeboxs!
6) Synchronized cylinder cock smoke exhaust to coincide with the appropriate exhaust chuff.
7) Separate/dual electric motors, so that the front engine is powered by its own motor and is totally independent from the rear engine, thus providing much more realistic drive action (the from engine could occasionally slip, just like the real thing when starting a train).
