Can anyone post a close up picture of a Varney or Bowser engine with the valve gear installed. I’m in the process of installing one & the instructions are as clear as mud to me, also looks like there are not enough rivets in the kit…Thanks. jerry
I found this:
[! ](http://www.bowser-trains.com/hoemrrs/dockside/460.jpg)
On other Bowser kits, I have found they typically give you more rivets than needed. Maybe some are missing?
The Varney dockside was sparse and spartan. just a connecting side rod and a drive rod and nothing else. A small cottage industry sprang up in the 60’s and 70’s to give a very complete valve/drive gear setup of after market goodies for those little engines. The dockside or L’il Joe was my very first engine back in 1959 and came via a x-mas gift which was the Varney three car freight set with the dockside.
You wanna’ see some docksides?! Go to dockside heaven. This guy is heavily OCD’d on the dockside and probably has 50% of all remaining dockside in his collection! Wow! There is some good images of just how lousy the various HO dockside valve gear was, as issued. A couple of images show the dockside with the add-on kit installed. I can’t remember who sold those upgrades for the dockside, but it made them look a heck of a lot better. There is also a real image of the full dockside valve gear. It was busy amidst those drivers!
go to http://www.flickriver.com/photos/9977705@N05/sets/72157628365354533/
Back then, you could cal-scale and Kemtron the dockside to death! You’ll see some pretty done-up models on the guys dockside page. The original dockside sold for $9.95 and never sold for much more than $15.00. But for only 4 times what you paid for it and 20 hours labor you could make it look like a brass beauty, transforming it into a showpiece. Of course it still would not crawl, but could do 150 scale mph with ease. NWSL and others had the gear kits that could help turn it into a real switcher, though.
Richard
Thanks for the web site. that guy really has a corner on the market!! No wonder I haven’t seen many at train shows. I have the inst. that came with the valve gear, but some of the #s don’t match etc.
I’ve got 2 websites for you
1st, http://yardbirdtrains.com/index.htm
and http://www.hoseeker.net/lit.html
Yardbirds is a great parts supplier for vintage trains, HOSeeker has diagrams, instructions and parts lists for hundreds of older trains. Scroll almost to the bottom of the page, click the Varney button, and go nuts!!
Good Luck!
Jerry: Was it you that had a WTB for this stuff on one of the HOswap sites? If so, I think you might be able to get what you need from Bowser: http://bowser-trains.com/hoemrrs/dockside/dockside.htm (scroll down the page)
Jerry,
Just one helpful hint, make sure you have a rivet tool, some kits came with them, I don’t know about all of them, It makes life easier,
Cheers,
Frank
Bowser provided extra rivets because they knew that some people would damage them, and would need the extra rivets.
John
It’s kind of sad Bachmann or Walthers couldn’t make one of these preassembled. They were very popular.
I bought three different versions of the docksider over the years in an effort to get enough good parts that I could rebuild just one.
The only one still in production is a very cheap and fake looking LifeLike.
I’m not sure which is the more overproduced, Docksider or Big Boy - I I’d have to give the nod to Docksider as far as ratio of numbe rof models produced to the number of actual prototypes that ever existed.
I think my favorite fantasy mod with Kemtron bits is the one in The Complete Book of Model Railroading, converting a Docksider into a 4-4-0 cab forward. I always wanted to build one of those, for some silly reason.
–Randy
I would vote for the triplexes.
But if sales should relate to the number of actual prototypes, there would be a heck of a lot more Mike’s out there.