My girlfriend just won me a Bowser 4-4-4-4 HO PRR Duplex…Anyone knows this brand and train?
Welcome, you have come to the right place.
The brand is very good. I don’t personally own any, but I have known people that have some. Bowser used to offer these in kit form and recently stopped production on those along with other manufactureres.
Since you say “won,” I’m assuming eBay or something similar. Do you know if it’s RTR or kit form?
Here is a link with a lot of information on the loco. One of the links is your question in this forum. This why I tell people here to never put their email address in a message. Scammers can find it very easily.
Rich
Hey, sounds like you have an awesome girlfriend.[tup] And she couldn’t have chosen a better train. The T1 4-4-4-4 duplex engine is my favorite of all time.
I have the BLI version, which is superb. I don’t know much about Bowser, but I have seen pics of it. I’ll post them later on.
Congrats on your new engine! [:)]
Bowser is a USA company that announced, maybe six months ago or more, that it was finally discontinuing to offer for sale many of the HO metal locomotive kits it had offered for years and years. Some are still available, and will be for the foreseeable future, but this engine is likely to be scarce.
You should know that it is/was in the form of a kit that requires/required assembly. If you know that yours is assembled, your hope now is that it was done well, and that the kit had no defective parts or deficiencies. It still may need to be painted and decals applied.
They are heavy engines that are good pullers. You can apply more appliances and piping if you wish to super-detail them, and Bowser offered some super-detailing sub-kits for many of their engines. The T1 should need few, if any, since it was streamlined and meant to be ‘clean’ in outward appearance.
Also, this will almost certainly be a strictly DC (Direct Current) engine, although it can be converted to run on the DCC (Digital Command Control) method.
-Crandell
I have the final version of the Bowser 4-4-4-4. It’s all metal, very nicely detailed, and came in full kit form. It has two large Pittman-style motors (open-frame with a large magnet on the back), and after quite a bit of fine tuning, it’s a great runner with a huge amount of power.
There are two version of this engine from Bowser. One has a crudely detailed lead boiler that came straight from Penn Line when they shut down over 40 years ago. The other is the newer version that I have. The one advantage the old lead boiler has over the new zinc ones is its weight. I hear they weighed as much as 5lbs!
Your girlfriend is definitely a keeper! [:)]
The Bowser T-1 4-4-4-4 Duplex was originally produced by a company called Penn Line, up until the late '60s or early '70s. Bowser bought out Penn Line at that time, and produced the loco until earlier this year. The loco has been produced with one and with two large open-frame motors. Both versions are heavy (my two-motor version weighs in at around 3 pounds for the engine and tender) and extremely powerful, and can handle most curves well, due to having both sets of drivers pivoted inside the boiler housing.
These are kits which will require some patience and care in building, but when done you will have a truly beautiful streamlined steamer (the original was designed by Raymond Loewey) that will pull the plaster off the wall. With a little patience, you can light the number boards, as well as the class lights, headlight, and running light (in the center of the front radiator housing). And yes, there was a radiator/cooling housing for the air pumps. on the pilot.
Good luck with your locomotive, and hang onto that girl! [:D]
Google “PRR T1 Duplex” for a bunch more information.
Its a kit and it’s put together,but not painted or railing installed… The train only as one motor installed in… it’s a two motor version…It does have the other motor in the box…I will install it on too have a two motor system…I do autobody&paint work…so this will look sweet when its done…I’m not a big fan of that green…I might paint it black to go with the gold stripesing…From the black and white pics of the T1 it looks black…I think it might look sweet in high gloss black…and stripes…Ok another thing I wanted to do on it is to installed protosound system in it…Oh those BlL duplex are out of stock with no restock date eighter…The train runs and has been cleaned and relubed too…Any ideas what the bowser sells the 4-4-4-4 kits for?
I’m not sure if you have already seen this, but here is a nice pic of the Bowser T1 fully assembled and painted, with gold stripes on the side of the tender. Looks classy! [tup] Is that the look you are going for? Anyway, congrats again. Beautiful engine.
The PRR painted its engines Dark Green Locomotive Enamel (DGLE) which is black with only a hint of green.
Note that the prototype Pennsy T1 went through some styling changes especially at the front end during its rather short production life, and the Bowser version is a bit different than the Broadway Limited.
Penn Line brought out its model in very early 1950s. Penn Line went belly up around 1960 or so and Bowser bought up the tooling and gradually released the various Penn Line metal kits, often with improvements. If you get the Bowser Manual you’ll see that over the years the parts, and parts numbers, changed, which can make repairing or completing an older kit a distinct challenge.
Just this year Bowser ceased production of these kits to concentrate on their freight car and plastic diesel production.
While the detailing of the T1 was a bit crude even by the standards of its day, when carefully constructed and neatly painted the Penn Line / Bowser engines can look nice and being all metal they can really pull. My advice would be to look over your model very carefully. There is probably a very limited time frame in which to purchase any replacement parts you’ll need from Bowser. I also don’t know if the decals are still available.
Dave Nelson
I looked over my notes on the Bowser T1, based on my experience with one engine that I have rebuilt:
Old boiler (lead alloy, poor detail and inaccurate contour): 24 oz. (1.5 lbs)
New boiler (die cast Zamak, improved contour and detail): 15 oz. (0.94 lbs)
Old boiler and chassis combined: 40.4 oz. (2.53 lbs)
New boiler and chassis combined: 30.8 oz. (1.93 lbs)
Chassis only: 16.4 oz. (1.025 lbs)
The reason I did all this weighing was to determine how much weight I might add to the new boiler to bring the tractive effort up to that of the engine with the old boiler. About 10 oz.of lead should do it; there is space between the electric motors, high in the boiler.
The most important single improvement I made was to get rid of the two high pivots above the motors which causes some odd boiler motion under load. The high pivots also cause the front motor unit to “walk out” under load, which raises the front drivers clear of the track, with derailment. So, I milled out a solid brass bar that connects the two engine units, making it a true duplex (not articulated). The bar is the same design you would find under any 4-8-4, retaining the axles in the frames. Fortunately, I run on broad curves only (about 72" radius). With the rigidized frame, the engine is very steady, and pulls plenty.
I also have the Bowser lost wax cast detail kit, and after studying many photos of the actual engines, a few errors in the directions were discovered. The lubricators on the left side are laid out incorrectly. The diagram shows three lubricators on the rear engine, whereas the actual T1’s had two on the rear engine, and one on the forward engine. The forward engine lubricator should be over the exposed piston rod, and should be mounted in mirror image to the lubricator on the right side (correctly shown in the diagram). The twin lubricators on the rear engine, left side, should be mounted forw
I know that is version is freight one…because the passanger version has full side skirting on it…
There was no “freight version” of the T1, as it was a passenger engine. It tended toward driver slipping due to its high boiler pressure, and misaligned sand pipes, and was not used on freight, except perhaps when testing. The skirts were cut back to allow access to the mechanical components, and possibly to simplify production.
how many T1 did baldwin loco made for PRR? I’d thought they keep one with the skirtting for passanger and took off/ditch the skirtting for the freight ones?
I think it was actually for maintenance purposes. The early ones had the skirting, which covered up a lot of the pumps and mechanics, and the later ones had it removed to make maintenance easier.
Looks like you got one of the newer ones! The realistic color is DGLE (brunswick green), which is about 95% black with a hint of green. Spray that on, do the decals carefully (they’re very fine and fragile), and give it a gloss clear laquer finish. It should look great when it’s done![:D]
Baldwin built the first two T1’s with full skirts and a long nose, #6110 and 6111, in 1942. These two were followed by PRR-built 5500-5524, and Baldwin-built 5525-5549. The two groups were completed more or less at the same time, from November 1945 through August 1946.
The Q2 was the PRR’s Duplex freight engine, but that was quite a different design with a 4-4-6-4 wheel arrangement, and smaller diameter (69") drivers. They were built during 1944, I think, before the bulk of the T1 fleet was built.
The T1’s lost their skirting and shrouding nearly as fast as they were delivered. Maintenance of the poppet valves was constant, so the valve gear covers on the sides of the cylinder housings were usually left off (impossible to simulate on the Bowser model, as it is a one-piece die casting). By looking at dated photos, you can trace the loss of shrouding through the years on individual engines. The general trend was that there was less and less. In the last years, when most of the T1’s were in storage, the survivors were seen missing shrouding around the stack, which gave them a much rougher look.
It will be done with automotive urethane paints.I I do autobody&paint work so this baby will be nice glossy finish on it…Like the first pic of the T1 from Baldwin loco plant…If the decial are to fragile,I’ll get calli graphic to make me new and improve ones for it… She does alot of R/C planes ,boats and cars decials…Once I get the decials on it ,I’ll spray urethane clear coat on them and the train…
i’m still think going gloss black instead of green…Black and gold goes so well with eachother…I like all the PPR proto trains,like the S2 turbine S1 duplex Q1,Q2…I like the articuated trains…!(http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/<a%20href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o269/Misshydro/?action=view¤t=2178_1241381143.jpg" target=“_blank”>
)!(http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/<a%20href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o269/Misshydro/?action=view¤t=t1pre_deliveryatblw.jpg" target=“_blank”>
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I was in Auto Body and paint for 25 years. Figures I finally get sick of cars and find a hobby where I am still sanding all the time! [:(!]
I am a fan of the Duplex and hope to have one some day. I was close when Blue Line had them out, but I had on last 18 inch turn. It is gone now and so are the Duplex’s. Here a photo you may like.
They should have paint the engine white! Look at the waves! (black shows more defect, white helps hide them)
All so [#welcome]
Cuda Ken