This is just a nice little after noon project. I've posted separately about my bashing the LC+ Mikado loco, but this is a bit more generic so i thought I would post separately because I think it might help anyone searching for this in the future. And you don't have to bash the loco to want to add a real coal load.
Here is the tender, stock. Nice looking, and good size. Despite the loco being semi-scale, about 12% smaller than scale, this is very much scale sized for smaller tenders in the 1900-1930 period. Nice heavy metal casting, too.Note however, there really isn't room to just glue real coal on top of the molded-in coal load and have it look real.
For screws, one at each corner underneath, come out and the chassis and body separate. Unlike in Legacy, in LC+ there is nothing but the speaker and the wires to the electrocoupler in the tender.
There are five screws underneath the top layer of the tender.
Remove them and the top of it comes off in two pieces . . .
I put the rear piece back on and made a plastic piece to cover the other area. I used Loctite repair putty to hold it in place. Putting it along the edges both above and below.
I made a new rear bulkhead for the coal load, with that lip/collar as the original had. Note I moved it rearward about 1/2 inch, for a bigger coal load. (The original coal load stopped at the rear of the shiny metal showing inside the coal load area). Again, I used repair putty to hold it in place.
I always prime anything I paint. This is Rustoleum brown primer. Why did I use it rather than gray - 'cause I've bene using too much gray on projects lately and have an unused can of brown primer.
I sprayed it flat black. When dry, I poured white glue into the coal load area about 1/8 inch thick, poured crumbled real coal on it, and let it set for two hours, then turned the car over and let the loose coal fall into a bin for re-use. I put another layer of white glue on top of that coal, but this time only no closer than 1/4 from the edges, and poured more coal, to build it up higher in the center. When it had dried for about 2 hours hour I repeated (dumped loose out, put a third layer of glue even farther inside the edges of the coal load area, and put another layer of coal on. It looks flat here, for some reason, but it is actually slightly higher in the center. I didn't fill in all the way to the top, looks better like this, I think.
Here it is with the not-yet completely loco.
