Bill Brower

Ken Shattock writes:

Another prolific builder of locomotives at GGLS in the 1950's was William "Bill" Brower, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Bill would turn out approximately one new locomotive per year. He always said that the leftover material in his scrap box from building an engine was the "start" of yet another locomotive. He built the Lion-Titfield Thunderbolt; the Stourbridge Lion; Thatcher Perkins from the B&O; a Mastodon type too, and so many others. Most were in 3/4, 1-inch or 1 1/2-inch scale.

Bill Brower built a number of Semaphore signals for the club's elevated track that were electrically controlled by the position of a train in the block. They were really neat during the many years they were in operation at Redwood Park and to this very day, were the ONLY block signals that the club ever used on the elevated track. When the club moved to Tilden Park in Berkeley in 1971, all of these neat signals somehow disappeared. They have never been seen since.

Bill Brower also built a special "track cleaning car" with rotary brushes for the elevated track at Redwood Park. He named it "LA COSA"!! And he would drag it around behind a train. The solvent drips down from the tank with the rotary brushes following. "La Cosa" (translated) is "The Thing" !!!

The late GGLS member "Bill Brower" with the club's track cleaning car: "LA COSA". Note one of Bill's signals towards the right of the photo. Photo provided by Ken Shattock.

As his regular vocation in life, Bill was a master machinist. For many years he was in charge of the Physics Department machine shop at the University of California at Berkeley.

See Bill's Dynamometer car.

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  Walter Brown examines Bill Brower's old time loco. Photo by L.M. McKenney. GGLS Labor Day Meet 1953. From "The Miniature Locomotive", Nov-Dec 1953.