Moodie Braun

Moodie Braun purchased Little Engines company from Irene Lewis.

From Modeltec, November 1984:


 * Moodie E. Braun, Jr


 * Moodie was born in Tucson, Arizona in 1936 and reared in Phoenix where, upon graduation from the Arizona State University in 1958, entered the Air Force as an electronic engineer.


 * In 1978, Moddie retired from a six year assignment to the Space and Missile Systems Division in Los Angeles as a Lt. Colonel.


 * His interest in Live Steam began in 1946 at the age of then years when a catalog was purchased from the Yankee Shop Machinists which later became Friends Models.


 * He carried a 10 inch lathe around for the last ten years of military service and began building Live Steam projects in the mid 1960's.


 * In 1972, Moodie became associated with Little Engines in Lomia, California, and purchased the business upon his retirement in 1978.


 * Moodie married a British girl, Valerie (daughter of a veterinary surgeon) and they have two daughters, Clara (22) and Tania (18).

Tidbits From Chaski
Living Legend writes:


 * After Moodie Braun bought Little Engines from Irene Lewis during the late 1970's, he started making some changes to he original designs, such as 3-piece cylinder block castings for some of the engines. Plus, Little Engines came out with a different, newer version of the Northern.


 * Some of the origional (prior to Moodie Braun converting them to CAD in the 1980's) Little Engines drawings had a number of errors as Irene Lewis wasn't really all that concerned about making the corrections needed to them.


 * Seems to me during the Braun ownership of Little Engines, development of a Hudson based upon the Northern began. This was about the same time the "New" Northern was being developed so I think the two were basically the same. Just missing one driver set.


 * He started to change the cylinders for some of the 1.5" LE locos from a complete one-piece cylinder casting or, in the case of the Mogul, a one-piece main casting along with a separate top mounted saddle casting to a three piece cylinder assembly with a full center saddle casting that the outer cylinder castings bolted on to. The three-piece Mogul cylinder assembly was designed by Moodie to be a direct replacement for the original one-piece cylinders and mounted the same way. The original LE Mogul cylinders were made to appear like the two-piece design of the full size Baldwin the model was based upon, which were bolted together at the center-line of the full size loco's frame.


 * The 1870 mogul was first available in the 1970's. I believe the girl (if she's younger teen) in the picture of the 1.5" 2-6-0 (if it's the 1870 model) is one of Moodie Braun's daughters. Both of Moodie's daughters were riding on the car pulled by the loco being run by their father in the photo that was used in the LE magazine ads which ran in the 1980's. Moodie was a retired USAF Colonel and he bought LE from it's founder, Irene Lewis during the late 1970's. Moodie died back in the 1990's.


 * If I remember correctly, Moodie's wife "Val" was in a couple of the catalog's photos.

Cary Stewart wrote:


 * Moody had a complete set of CP173 castings, drawings and accessories but he never did any work on it. He offered me this kit and a COMPLETE brand new EMCO Maier Maximat V-10 Mentor with vertical. It had every accessory that was available at the time. During the occupation of Austria he had something to do with administration of something that had to do with EMCO. Salzburg was in the US Occupied Zone. He was given a very heavy discount on the machine and stuff. He had brought it home from Austria when he was transferred from there to LA. He was an officer in Air Force Logistics before retirement and the purchase of Little Engines.