I have to be honest, this is one of my faves. Even though it runs terribly, the prototype is so weird that I can’t help but love it. Lima had a 2-6-4 chassis that they had already fitted to a few European models, so why bother tooling up for another chassis? The problem was when they came to look for an American 2-6-4 prototype (two leading wheels, six driving wheels, four trailing wheels) they couldn’t find one. That wheel arrangement was common in Europe, but rare in the U.S. - and most American locos to use it were very small, far too small to fit Lima’s existing chassis.
The Reading Railroad however did have some relatively large 2-6-4 engines, built in 1903. Lima had to play with the proportions to fit them to the chassis, but the resulting model looks ok, I guess. The pilot, or “cow catcher” is way too huge, the wheelbase is too long, etc. etc. but nobody else is ever going to make a ready to run model of this oddity, so I’ll take what I’ve got.
Being from the 70s, the engineering is not that great. The motor sucks, the electrical pick up sucks (only half the wheels conduct electricity, and of those, only two draw current from one rail, while the rest pickup the other rail???) and it’s pretty noisy. But unlike the worst N scale model ever made, Lima’s EMD F7, this one can actually pull a train.