I like the idea of changing out the pilot (and the tender). The 400E doesn't really look like anything real anyway. Lionel must have paid that NYC engineer a lot of dough when he told the kid on the catalog cover 'just like mine' (engineer on a J1 NYC Hudson). Frankly, I'm not sure why MTH didn't offer a 400E with a straight coal tender (ever seen the prototype set at John DeSantis collection?). But I'm nowhere near buying something like this.
Jim