So here is a closer look at the Yavapai's tender. At present the only real change I've made to it was the removal of the original tender flare. It was completely vertical and the shape was a little too 'modern' looking to me. I plan on scratch building a new tender flare which will lean out to the sides like on older steam locomotives to give it more of an 1880s look than an 1890s one. Also the Fox style trucks will be removed and replaced in favor of Archbar style trucks. Once all of that is in place I'll add a new fuel load made of real coal.

Another thing I plan on doing is adding semi-Proto48 couplers to the front and rear of the locomotive. This means that the couplers will not be magnetically operated like with the traditional Kadee couplers, but will operate like the real thing. Requiring the use of a lift bar to pull a pin to open the coupler knuckle. The reason for this is so I can double head steam engines with the longer, old time style pilots (cow catchers) The magnetic trip pins used on Kadee couplers can foul themselves on the locomotive pilots, so by using Proto48 couplers I can avoid that. AND they look great!

The tender and body shell of the locomotive have ample space for adding a DCC/Sound decoder, which will be installed eventually.