Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

The actual Chromalox heaters are very early and very rare.
Your engine, I’m sure, has the more common ceramic cartridge heater that is found on many engines up to the point where Jensen started using blanket heaters in the late 1930s.

Here’s a photo of a failed heater that I tried to take apart for repair. I gave up since I was destroying the ceramic in the process. It’s best to just get a new heater of the correct wattage and do whatever it takes to make it for snug in the boiler tube. I wrapped one with aluminum from pop cans and it works fine. I have another slated for replacement, but this time I’m using a pice of aluminum round stock turned to fit the boiler tube and then bored out to fit the heater. See photo of new heater.

Here’s a video I made showing the variations between different 35 models.

https://youtu.be/k5pZpP1kDio