New Milwaukee Road Pacific Locomotives

[JPD]

Just received the two recently produced Milwaukee Road 4-6-2 Light Pacifics made by Broadway Limited Imports (BLI).  Although these are USRA light Pacifics, which the Milwaukee Road did not own, the BLI locomotives are great stand in locomotives for the Pacifics they did own.  BLI did a great job of painting both the plain black locomotive (no. 155) and the colorful Chippewa locomotive (no. 197). 

 

In particular, unlike the old IHC version of the Chippewa, BLI got the maroon color right and did not use brown (even though that is what they have displayed on their website, see http://www.broadway-limited.com/2930lightpacific4-6-2milw171chippewaparagon2sounddcdccho.aspx).  The maroon matches my Walther’s heavyweight Milwaukee Road locomotives perfectly.  I think I can take a little credit for the correct color.  I had emailed BLI and pointed out that brown was wrong and sent them some color photographs and other documentation.  I am glad they listened to one of their customers.

 

I took the Chippewa pacific and nine passenger cars to my club layout and it performed very well.  It hauled the passenger train up a helix with no trouble.  The sound is great.

 

I am very pleased with this purchase.  Now I have to sell the two undecorated BLI Pacifics I purchased a year ago with the plane to decorate them for the Milwaukee Road.  No need for them now that I have these two wonderful looking locomotives.  I just hope that BLI comes out with more Milwaukee Road steam locomotives in the future.

 

P.S. I also noticed that they were going to put the gold and red herald on the Grand Trunk Western 2-8-2 Light Mikado they were going to release.  I pointed out that the colored herald was used on passenger locomotives and the white logo was used on freight locomotives like the Mikado.  Looking at their website I see they followed my advice (see http://www.broadway-limited.com/2906usralightmikado2-8-2gtw455paragon2sounddcdccho.aspx).  The lesson here is that we customers should speak up when we notice flaws in pre-release notices.