I found this old Bowser that I built about 1988.I oiled the armature and wheel bearings and set up a loop on my dining room table.Here is what happened; (Click on the pic to view the clip) 
Very good - smooth as silk! (What I had to do was right click on the image, then click on go to link, it took me to photobucket where the video was one of the choices in the upper left of the screen). I guess I had forgotten that Bowser made the Pennsy G class 4-6-0; I don’t think Penn Line from which Bowser got most of its tooling ever did. LifeLike did for a brief time.
Actually, by Bowser/Penn Line standards, 1988 is pretty darned new so it is not shocking it still runs nicely. There are plenty of their engines that have long sinced passed the half century mark and are still going strong. If you think you’d ever want to buy the Bowser super detail set for this engine however you may want to check their website and do so now, because Bowser has discontinued all these steam locomotives that were the mainstay of their catalog before they purchased the Stewart diesel line.
Dave Nelson
Wow! I didn’t realize that they no longer offer the Bowser kits!I guess they were becoming too expensive to produce!The funny part was I didn’t have to clean the wheels! I put it on the track and she took right off!I wonder if the lack of flywheels could explain why they had to discontinue the line.
Apparently the argument goes that there is no demand for kits as was claimed by Bowser not too long ago—it is all RTR now–[:-^]
ALthough I think in addition to low demand, I think the tooling is probably getting quite worn out - some of those models go back a LONG way.
–Randy
I think your next project should be finding enough cars for that little puppy to haul, LOL! Those Bowser locos are built like tanks and pull like oxen. I’d definitely incorporate it into your loco fleet.
Glad it still runs for you. And thanks for the video link.
Tom [:D]
WEll I have a lot of freight cars(Mostly Athearn)and the boxes have prices from anywhere from $2.50 to 3.50!Plus my Athearn PA-1 ABA had low prices too(22.00 bucks for the powered unit)Wow those were the days!.
dkn:
Yup. My first reaction was the same. “What old Bowser? It’s just broken-in.” [:D]
It’s still great to see the beast runs well, of course.
I don’t know why their kits went away. It seems like they lost interest in their kit line shortly after the B6 came out, or around the time they bought Stewart, and after that they let 'em coast to a gradual halt, with a slow decline in promotion and visibility in the magazines.
Remember articles like “Apex of the Atlantics”? Get together a bunch of MRs, and you can almost trace this, from the 1970s’ increased interest in kits (which nearly went away before, in the 60s, due to inexpensive brass imports),perhaps cresting around the time MDC and Mantua were reviving and revitalizing their lines, and then shrinking with the latest flood of imports. I wonder how many people realize that we’ve been here before - but this hobby tends to have a 20-year memory hole where everything gets lumped. 
I do perceive an uptick in interest recently, as the imports have risen in price, and maybe people just got bored of opening boxes, but this is just a casual observation, and at any rate Bowser didn’t water the seedling. I suspect they wanted a ride on the plastic-import-RTR money train. If there is something here, somebody with more vision will take advantage of it.
Philo, the prices are 4.50 - 6.28 for the cars, and 40.00 for the loco, in 2009 dollars. Not too shabby. Athearn really was a good bargain at the time. An interesting related point is that Bowser’s list prices, adjusted for inflation, were about the same then as recently - and about the same 30 years before that, (agai
AS I recall I bought the Bowser kit for $56.00 in '88.I thought it was a decent bargain at the time and I love to hear that Pittman motor growling on that main gear!I remember buying the MDC 2-truck Shay in '84 for about 40 bucks.Boy that kit was a bear but I finally got her running.She still runs great and I will post another video if anyone is interested!