I finally got around to grabbing a Bowser loco kit on eBay. Now to overcome the intimidation of all the stuff in the box. Did MR ever write about building one of these kits? Seems like the loco kit niche needs to take a page from Walthers and their quest to build the market for passenger trains. Bowser didn’t have any leads on where to turn for guidance getting started with the kit. The directions are typed, not typeset so you can tell they haven’t been updated since the beginning. Did the market for kits die from lack of attention by the manufacturers?
A well built Bowser engine will pull like you have never seen. You don;t say which engine you bought but Kris Kollar did a two part article on the PRR L1s 2-8-2 a couple of years ago in Mainline Modeler . Check the PRRT&HS web site for articles in the Keystone Modeler free for downloading. I know there has been at least one on detailing a 4-4-4-4 T1 that looks fabulous.
My first locomotive kit was a Bowser K4 Pacific that I built 36 years ago. I found the instructions adequate to the task. There are a lot of parts so be prepared to take some time with this kit. I really liked it and if I were still in HO I would buy all the different models.
I suspect the market for locomotive kits is dying because there are so many RTR locos that are similar in price. So there is no need to assemble your own kit and no price advantage to doing so. I would guess that as long as there is a source of relatively cheap labor such as Asia has now, then kits will be in short supply.
Enjoy
Paul
g:
Loco kits died in the 1960s. Brass killed them. They then revived and chugged along until the 1990s, and declined, until the present.
The hobby mags used to have a good amount of kitbuilding and loco kitbashing using these kits. This died off quickly after the 90s - as did the advertising by the kitmakers. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? If you’re not promoting a product, nobody writes the articles.
The three manufacturers that existed at the beginning of the 90s ended kit production in very different ways.
Mantua, whose kits were the simplest and best-engineered for newbies, had a great revival from the 1970s to the 1990s and then died of severe stupidity, typified by the Super Bowl Express and ill-conceived Collectibles line. This began after a management change, which may have been a coincidence. May.
MDC was wound down for a while (remember all their ads?) while still upgrading their kits (and not promoting the upgrades at all) and then sold to Horizon, who still produces some locos RTR, but apparently had zero interest in kits. I think the previous owner simply wanted to retire.
Bowser steadily added to and upgraded their line, and kept up a relatively consistent parade of not
Try the Bowser web site. There is a wealth of information there. You can download the instructions if the kit was available in the recent years. They have also been very helpful when I have gotten stuck and needed a bit of “push” in the right direction.
I’m pretty sure “Model Trains” did some a few years ago.
Ed
A few? Model Trains magazine - a Kalmbach publication - died in the early 1960s. Pity - I always thought it was a very helpful magazine. And you’re right, I’m sure - they would have done articles on Bowser, Penn Line, Mantua, and Model Diecasting kits, and I know they did one on detailing the old Mantua “Belle of the Eighties” 4-4-0.
Gewald: Don’t be intimidated by the number of parts. The instructions will get you through the process very nicely. Just make sure you have some files handy. You’ll spend some time cleaning up casting flash. Any hassle, feel free to contact me off-forum, or if I can’t help, post your questions here… Most of us old coots have been there and done that, a bunch of times. I’ll wager that anyone who’s been in the hobby more than 30 years or so (50+ for me) has built one or more of these or similar kits.
If you’re looking for information on how to build a basic steam kit (Bowser, MDC, Mantua, Penn Line, Varney, etc, etc) then you have to essentially ignore MR and head over to RMC. While I remember several steam scratchbuilding series over the deades from MR, all or most of the good kit steam articles have come from Carstens, not Kalmbach.
Specifically, look for anything written on steam kits from John Swanson:
http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=S&sort=A&output=3&cmdtext="SWANSON%2C+JOHN"+RMC
Reading through his articles in the 1980s, especially his “Steam From Kits” series got me into pot metal steam building, detailing, superdetailing, and eventually kitbashing. They’re a must-read for any steam modeler (not steam runners, MODELERS).