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

I've been slowly going through collection of Bowman steam engines I purchased as a group a few weeks back & thought I would put them on this thread as I finished with each one. I was to later understand they were all static engines & were never actually ran, so I have been carefully going through each one & performing any & all work that they might need to bring them up to my standards. Please enjoy if you have the time.
1st off is a Bowman m140 with the original box



after a bit of clean up & some tuning, this is a favorite of mine & is surprisingly powerful.



Next is a Bowman m122 ,this required a bit more work , cleaned out the boiler (had a bunch of green like resin/grit in it) & in moving it about the solder from the boiler to steam line detached & that had to be refreshed. my usual method of assessing a new engine is to bring it in the house on a little table next to "my chair" and to fettle with it while watching TV, despite all my encouragement I could not get it to run slowly & properly, I started taking the cylinder assemblies apart & found a very tiny rubber 0 ring in the right piston bore, it was just small enough to create a significant drag on that cylinder? after removing that it made all the difference in the world. I made s triple brass pulley for it & soldered a brass lug in the bottom of the chimney & a brass pin 5/16"od mounted to the base to receive the chimney since this model has no stay rod. the base has been repainted (top & bottom) with great effort to keep the original logo transfer intact. it will now run on as little as 2 lbs. pressure.



m122 on air, a bit more detail



Next up is my Bowman m101, the biggest offering in the Bowman lineup. this one was in good condition as it arrived, running it on compressed air it seemed fine, after steaming it the 1st time I noticed quite a bit a steam escaping from the mating surfaces of the oscillating parts and disassembled them and ground them down to a parallel surface, this dramatically improved performance, power & decreased steam consumption. the connecting rod had a gentle bend in it that tended to make the cylinder side of the oscillating pair lift a bit while running, I straightened that out as well. I made a few knurled knobs for the overflow tap & chimney support (hold down) nut. the steel stay rod has been replaced at some point with a nice brass rod. this particular model doesn't have a throttle & judging by some of the brochures I have, apparently a throttle was not always standard.



more to come as I get to them...

Bruce, you snagged a primo set of Bowmans...love those boxes and they all have that beautiful Bowman "look".  I am especially fond of the M101!

Rog

Bruce, you snagged a primo set of Bowmans...love those boxes and they all have that beautiful Bowman "look".  I am especially fond of the M101!

Rog

Thanks Daniel & Rog
yes, I have a few original boxes with this lot, I'm very grateful that Larry (jkbixby) kept it all in good shape. it's hard not to love the m101 ,I have a great fondness for the biggest engines of any maker. this m101 had the biggest improvement in running with the least amount of work, just a filing down and flattening of the 2 mating surfaces did the trick nicely. of the British made engines I really like Bowmans for their gear reduction offerings.

Nick, I did hook it up to my Wilcox & Gibbs sewing machine & after making a special pulley for the Bowman m101 it ran it just fine as seen below.



I tried to dead lift 9 lbs. but it was a no-go, 3.3 lbs. was all it would do. I noticed their claim was that it was powering a "crane" & would assume that there was more gear reduction with that outfit. I might try that challenge again soon.

Beautiful machines, these Bowman's
I have only one BOWMAN 234 O GAUGE LIVE STEAM LOCOMOTIVE
and I have been looking for this Bowman boat for many years
Congrats Bruce and thanks for the great movies

Arnold