After my normal perusing of eBay and Trainz.com, I found a few locomotives that peaked my interest (although aren’t on my short list). Despite my attempts to keep myself to a “short list,” I did find a deal I could not resist – so welcome to the fleet an MTH NYC 2-8-2 Mikado:

The downside of my “eBay special” is that for some odd reason the drawbar was missing from the locomotive. I followed up with the seller who was not able to locate the drawbar, so I had to fabricate my own.

I used another similar generation PS2 locomotive and pulled the drawbar to measure and came up with the following using my digital calipers:

78mm Long
7.55mm Wide
2mm Thick

I went to Lowes to look for some brass or metal to make my drawbar but the best I could find was some ~1/16″ thick “welding plate.” I used a chop saw with a metal cutting blade to cut my plate into a rectangle (took far longer than I had hoped – chop saw was not ideal for the application but it’s the only heavy duty metal cutting tool I have as I didn’t thing the dremel would cut it (pun intended)). I then used my vice and a dremel to grind down the bar to the shape close to the MTH part, then I drilled my two holes in my drawbar, before giving it an even coat of black metal spray paint.

End result worked the charm, can’t even tell it’s not the original piece unless you pull it off the locomotive and inspect it.  That being said, all told it probably took me about 1.5 hours worth of effort (not including the time spent milling around Lowes looking for materials).

Would I do it again, I’d probably use ABS plastic from Plastruct or Evergreen… alternatively I do have a jig saw with some metal cutting blades, but I’m not sure the jig saw blade is substantial enough to cut through 1/16″ steel.