I like it! It was obviously marketed as a toy. It would have been less expensive than an $8.50 Holly in 1880. It sort of has the feel of a nice model engine that's been left a bit rough so it can be sold as a toy (e.g. the flywheel has not been machined). Most of the toy engines in the 1870s and early 1880s did not use slide valves -- to keep the price down.
One name that deserves more research is George Parr. You wouldn't know from this ad that Parr made toys, but in 1875 he took a couple of his engines into Scientific American. One engine was a small 1/2 HP engine for powering a single lathe, etc. The other was described by the author as a toy, which was running on his desk as he wrote. Unfortunately, as he wrote, he did not bother to describe the toy engine on his desk. This company went away in 1878.
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The only model engine, or model engine castings in this time period I've run across with S-spokes, not counting the Peerless, is Goodnow & Wightman. They were still advertising with this artwork 1907. Most of the small manufacturers were too cheap to include artwork, so we'll never know what their engines looked like. I don't have access to one, but I think Goodnow's catalogs come up for auction from time to time, usually by tool collectors. I haven't found out much about them, their ads were common, but all used this same artwork. This engine in the is obviously is too big to be your engine, but it might be a lead.
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