The K-36 was one of several designs offered at the time that the Denver & Rio Grande Western railroad required new and more powerful motive power to handle the large increase in traffic on it's line. Slightly larger designs from other builders were considered for the chosen job, but due to turntable limitations, the design of the K-36 was selected for it's 2-8-2 (K) wheel arrangement and 36.200-pounds (36) of tractive effort. Baldwin Locomotive Works built ten of this new class of locomotive, road numbers 480-489 and they were considered the most modern design that the company had seen. Ultimately, the largest and most powerful steam power to ever run on narrow gauge systems, a perfect reason to select it as our first narrow gauge project!

The narrow gauge community has typically been one of the most discriminating modeling groups within the model railroading hobby and that has fostered some very well received models in years past, none more so than the several Kodama K-27 variants. That model stands as the benchmark with it's level of detail, accuracy and functional features. In more recent times, there have been lesser quality models offered that gained popularity as a result of their very attractive pricing, but that led to very few higher quality more expensive brass models being produced. Now, there are virtually no O narrow gauge products of any type being delivered.

The objective for our K-36 project is to continue our development with the Kodama K-27 in mind and to provide the dedicated research and range of features that we have afforded our standard gauge O scale models. In soliciting feedback from the modeling community as we proceed, our hope is to fine tune these models for their ultimate purpose. Our detailed objectives will be 'fleshed out' in due course. In the meantime, if you are not familiar with the work that we have done with our standard gauge O projects, please review the other project sites included on this platform and that will help to inform our intent.