(upbeat music) - Hello, I'm Lee English of Bowser Manufacturing.

I became the president many years ago and this is a family business.

And with many employees that have been with me for many, many years.

In 1961, my parents bought a little model train company out of Redlands, California and moved it to Bounce, Pennsylvania.

Our basement was the whole industry and the four school age kids were the whole labor force.

And it kinda grew from there and my parents decided to move to Montoursville PA, when we opened up our our first main model train store.

From there on, my mom and dad decided to buy many little companies and pieces of companies and we kept having to grow bigger and bigger.

We built a few new buildings, and in all that time we've now grown to about 35,000 square feet.

And today, we are still a major Ho model train maker and a very, very nice store.

Today, we're manufacturing many, many of our plastic parts right here in Montoursville.

These injection molding machines are some of the latest greatest machines, they're computerized controlled.

And what they do is they take plastic pallets, heat it and then inject it into these mold.

The computer controls really have improved our product so much that we can add details to the engines and cars that we really had trouble doing even 10 years ago.

Bowser HO Model Locomotives are known for their high level of detailing.

We add an awful lot of little tiny pieces to the outside bodies, that many people don't even realize they're there.

(upbeat music) This machine is a pad printer.

These are Western, Maryland coal cars, and what the machine does, it actually stamps the ink directly onto the car.

Many companies always think of it as decaling, but we actually position the car and then we use the machine to place the image on the car.

(upbeat music) And as a sideline, we also do what's called Z-scale.

Which is about one third the size of the HO.

And we make those mostly for one customer down in Florida who just loves the little trains.

Scott, is my artist.

And he researches all the cars and colors and images spend many, many hours going through pictures and videos and books looking for decorations that we can put on our engines and freight cars.

Probably the most difficult thing we have to research, is what color is the car?

Because color is not true on the internet, the TV, it's only true outdoors and a moderate sunlight.

The company Bowser, actually started with my father when he was a young boy living in Sunbury, PA. And his house was only about a half a block from the railroad line.

And in those days, in the 1920s and thirties, the railroad was everything.

It was our highway system.

It was our UPS and FedEx.

It delivered everything to every town including people going from city to city.

(country upbeat music)