Winton Brown

Winton Brown founded the Winton Locomotive Works Company in Danville, California in the early 1960's. Winton was a mechanical engineer by trade. He brought as set of finely honed engineering skills to the company, designing his locomotives for maximum strength, maximum weight on the drivers and easy, modular construction.

The Winton catalog included a section simply entitled “Engineering Notes”. Behind that humble title lay 17 pages of notes, drawings, formulas and tables essential for designing and building model steam locomotives. In the 1960's, if you were building a loco from scratch which wasn't adaptable from a Little Engines design the Winton catalog engineering section was considered the bible and many used it to design parts of their locos, especially boilers.

Winton's engineering data has been collected and published as Winton Brown Engineering Data.

Steam Pump
The following auction appeared on eBay, October 2017:


 * One complete set of silicon bronze castings with drawings for a Winton 3" scale steam driven air compressor. Included is an extra valve head casting in case of a machining error ruins the first casting. The steam cylinder casting is cored for inlet and exhaust ports. All castings are original Winton and in clean undamaged condition.

HO Scale Catalog
Winton once offered an all brass HO articulated kit, circa 1956

this is a 6-page list of castings and sample pictures.



Amusement Park
Harry Dixon wrote in The Miniature Locomotive, November-December 1954


 * Winton Brown and Larry Barker, two extraordinary live steamers, are augmenting their activities by starting and operating a Kiddie Amusement Park at Danville, California. Winton owns and operates the small merry-go-rounds such as the airplanes and miniature autos, while Larry has transferred his entire live steam railroad, 1-1/2 inch scale, from Portland, Oregon to Dvanville where he will entertain the kids as well as adults on a 1,100 foot track.  The best of luck to both of you.

Update: In later years, Larry Barker moved his entire 7 1/2-inch gauge railroad from Danville to Laytonville, CA where he was operating a Christmas tree farm last Secy Shattock heard.