It has a three pole motor.
Only half the wheels pick up electric on the tender.
There are wires from the tender to the locomotive.
Electric transmission from the drivers to the motor is accomplished by means of some rather ungainly appearing brass contacts and wires.
THe locomotive has cast-on handrails
In short, it employs some rather archaic construction methods.
There is a flywheel.
The locomotive has a metal boiler
The rods and valve gear are nicely and finely done--no clunkiness here.
It runs nicely. It probably has the smoothest 35-45 SMPH of any N scale steam locomotive out there, this despite its three pole motor.
Despite its half-wheel pick-up on the tender, the great comparative weight of the locomotive does make up for that lack of electric pick-up on the tender. Still, the archaic type pick-up on the drivers will cause problems down the road. It has flexing wires, which will come undone eventually.
The MT conversion is easy: 1015/1016 on the Vanderbilt tender, 1023 on the USRA Standard. MT does not have a front coupler conversion, it could be done, but would require a bit of work. The 'dummy' coupler will mate with the various knuckle couplers out there.
The pulling power is acceptable. Mine will take six RR HWs up a one-per-cent grade, which is what I want it to do. Others have complained about a lack of pulling power. It does show poor pulling power out-of-the box, but the pulling power does improve markedly with running/break-in time. Plan to apend some time breaking in this one, although the purpose will be to improve pulling power over runnability. The runnability of this one is good, out-of-the-box.
MP has a traction tyre retrofit available for this. It is a difficult retro-fit. I generally do not shy from tinkering with steam locomotives, but I do shy from this one. Still, other have said tht the traction tyre on this one markedly improves the pulling power, as it does on the mikado.
The prototype for it is a USRA light pacific (and USRA light mikado, for the mikado). Three roads had originals of this: ACL, B&O and L&N. ACL even had a class of copies. Other roads did have USRA light pacific copies.
MP also has this available with a Vanderbilt tender and a skirted version. ACL and B&O never skirted any of theirs. A L&N nut on the various forums has indicated that the L&N did put skirts on some of theirs. The ATSF version does resemble a skirted pacific that ATSF used on the Valley Flyer. MP offers it letterd for one or two grange roads; it does bear a remote resemblance to some of the skirted pacifics that the some grange roads ran. Other than that, most of the skirted schemes are phantasy. The B&O never skirted any of their P-5s. They did have some shrouded P-7s, which were essentially copies of the USRA HEAVY pacific. The ACL used their USRA light pacifics as much for freight as for passenger, so I doubt that they would have skirted theirs (the Piedmont roads used pacifics for freight, the flat territory allowed for high drivered freight engines).
The street prices for these run between ninety and one-hundred twenty bananas.
I would say buy one, see if you like it. If so, buy more. It is not a bad locomotive, but it could use a few improvements. All-wheel tender pick-up and electric transmission through the drivers similar to what Kato and B-mann SPECTRUM use on their steam (split frame) would go a long way toward improving this locomotive.
