Modelling time bomb

[MJI]

Well some good news, my Heljan 47 has not exploded, so could it be that it is stored in my bedroom where the temperature is more or less constant.

 

And yes my wife is not overly happy with a wall full of models!

[MJI]

I have a few of the Bachmann recent locos, 9F, 37, 20, 08, Mod Hall, 24, 42, and they all seem pretty good to me

[Poggy1165]

I recently had a Wrenn City of Liverpool pass through my hands. Essentially the old Hornby Dublo model, complete with ancient technology motor. I was given it to repair but as, among other things, it needed remagnetising, it had to go off to a specialist repairer. It was quickly returned, and now runs 'as good as new'.

 

I am tempted to say it was a crude model by modern standards, but robust. I wonder whether the current RTR jobs - beautiful though they are to look at - will prove as robust in the long term, and whether there will be people out there willing and able to repair them. Certainly the current practice of short runs followed by total unavailability must raise a doubt as to whether spares will be able to be procured. Perhaps it's just a symptom of the modern way with technology. No one seems to repair washing machines, microwaves, TVs or TV recorders any more. They just get chucked and replaced. 

[KalKat]

I repair stuff.... many things here in the house are 'pre loved' - the attitude of manufacturers (generally) does seem to be toward unserviceable construction though.

 

I assume this leads to the lack of need for spares, thus saving dead money tied up in stores of replacement parts.

[Nile_Griffith]

No one seems to repair washing machines, microwaves, TVs or TV recorders any more. They just get chucked and replaced. 

 

In part because the real cost of repair exceeds the replacement cost and in the case of a lot of consumer electronics (containing multi-layer circuit boards and surface mount electronics) It's really not that practicable anymore.

[Poggy1165]

The difference is that I don't much care if I have washing machine A or washing machine B, especially if the new version is cheaper to run than the old. Whereas a locomotive of a particular kind can't readily be replaced by another. If you have, say, a Grange, chucking it out and replacing it with a class 33 diesel may not be a satisfactory option.

[railsquid]

Some anecdotal evidence... My childhood HO/OO collection has effectively been in storage since 1989, during which time it has travelled across Europe in a motorhome, spent some years in a cellar which suffered (initially unnoticed) water damage, been shipped half-way around the world in a container and endured a few Japanese summers. Despite all that it seems to be largely in as good a shape as it was in 1989, with the exception of at least one item which succumbed to the aforementioned water damage, and my Lima class 33 (documented here) which has suffered some evidently non-fatal rust damage. This is not to say my stuff was in particularly good shape by 1989 - it suffered from amateurish paint jobs and motor maintenance - but on the whole it doesn't seem to have deteriorated physically.

 

For the record it's a small mix of Lima (HO class 33), Hornby (class 25), Lima (class 50 and 87) and Mainline (4MT or 5MT) and a miscellaneous bunch of carriages and wagons. I haven't examined it in any detail apart from the 25, which I managed to fire up and it runs (probably not much worse than I remember, which was that it wasn't all that great to start off with). No signs of material degradation.

 

The other day I also picked up a Roco N-gauge EMU model which will have been made between 1979 and 1984; it came in its original and somewhat battered polystyrene case which had some discolourations beneath the driving wheels; it's evidently seen some use (small bits of fibre wrapped around some of the axles) and could do with a careful strip-down and clean, but otherwise looks fine and even runs reasonably well (motor seems a bit noisy but I'm not sure what's normal for a Roco N-gauge model of that period).

 

I also have an old Kato N-gauge electric locomotive which I picked for next to nothing up to practice repair skills on; as far as I can tell it's around 30 years old; after careful disassembly and cleanup it runs reasonably well; the motor lobes are slightly tarnished but it works fine; in general no sign of material degradation, though the body was evidently exposed to strong sunlight at some point as parts of the paintwork are discoloured.

 

Anyway, like I said, just anecdotal evidence, YMMV. But with reasonable care, maintenance and storage I anticipate many years of usage from the stuff I have (though am in the process of laying in a stock of spare gears for my Graham Farish locos...)

[Jenny Emily]

My Father's old Hornby Dublo still runs in the main. There are about sixty locomotives, and whilst they require maintenance and some are better than others, they just keep on giving with a little TLC from time to time. Whilst there were a few items of rolling stock which disintegrated because of mazak rot, these were showing signs of this probably within ten years of being new rather than recently. Anything that has survived this long made of mazak it is safe to assume will not succumb to disintegration because of impurities.

 

I've fared quite well with more modern stuff. Split chassis models aside (and I only have half a dozen or so of these) the only other things to wear out are a motor on a Bachmann N class that burned out after a decade of use, a Bachmann 08 that squeals like a stuck pig when run (cannot find the source despite careful fettling of the gear chain), and a Hornby Q1 whose running is rationed because it is wearing out one of its side rods because the quartering on one wheel seems to be fractionally out. Modern stuff is far more complicated than the old Hornby Dublo, and this brings in a lot more to potentially go wrong, but I seem (touch wood) to be faring okay so far.

[railsquid]

Modern stuff is far more complicated than the old Hornby Dublo, and this brings in a lot more to potentially go wrong, but I seem (touch wood) to be faring okay so far.

 

I wonder how the fancy electronics will fare a couple of decades down the line? At least in N (which is all I have recent experience with) you get a PCB with a DCC socket and LEDs for the running lights at either end, which I doubt is repairable if something burns out. It might be possible to engineer a replacement, the circuitry doesn't seem particularly complex, but that's not a skill most people have. I suppose it should be easy enough to bypass the circuit board for DC control, though you'd lose the lights.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Well some good news, my Heljan 47 has not exploded, so could it be that it is stored in my bedroom where the temperature is more or less constant...

This may seem counter-intuitive, but it is actually low temperatures, and cycling between comfortable ambient and cold, that hastens zinc pest / mazak rot. The cause of the disintegration is that the contaminant 'helps' a transition in crystalline structure from the form that is stable at room temperature to one that is more stable at lower temperature.

 

...Whilst there were a few items of rolling stock which disintegrated because of mazak rot, these were showing signs of this probably within ten years of being new rather than recently. Anything that has survived this long made of mazak it is safe to assume will not succumb to disintegration because of impurities...

Not quite. Most alloys find ways to come apart in the longer term, and the mazak family hasn't been around long enough to find out for sure what its future holds. However - and I suspect of prime importance to most of us - if it has got through the first ten years without damage, then it is likely to last the remainder of the owner's lifetime.

[LNER4479]

I recently had a Wrenn City of Liverpool pass through my hands. Essentially the old Hornby Dublo model, complete with ancient technology motor. I was given it to repair but as, among other things, it needed remagnetising, it had to go off to a specialist repairer. It was quickly returned, and now runs 'as good as new'.

 

I am tempted to say it was a crude model by modern standards, but robust. I wonder whether the current RTR jobs - beautiful though they are to look at - will prove as robust in the long term, and whether there will be people out there willing and able to repair them. 

 

My Father's old Hornby Dublo still runs in the main. There are about sixty locomotives, and whilst they require maintenance and some are better than others, they just keep on giving with a little TLC from time to time. Whilst there were a few items of rolling stock which disintegrated because of mazak rot, these were showing signs of this probably within ten years of being new rather than recently. Anything that has survived this long made of mazak it is safe to assume will not succumb to disintegration because of impurities.

Another vote for the robustness of HD here.

 

I was at my Dad's last night and there on his layout was his original HD 'Duchess' and Ringfield 8F still going strong (both must have many 100s of actual miles on the clock by now).

 

Meanwhile, he handed me his five year old Hornby Britannia to repair. It was reported as having ground to a halt, motor still whirring but going nowhere. Having negotiated our way into the bowels of the mechanism (itself no mean feat), I found one of the plastic gears on the layshaft with a crack in it (and hence no longer gripping the shaft). I cleaned it and the adjacent gear as best I could and fixed it back on with a generous dollop of superglue between the two and it seemed to have held OK - for now. But how many plastic gears in a HD mechanism?

 

And while we're on the subject of indestructible old kit, how about putting in a word for good ol' H&M point motors and Duette controllers? (both of which he also still uses!)

[Revolution Ben]

Hello all,

 

In my experience many mechanical items actually fare better if used, rather than if stored away for a long period and then pushed into service.  I have locos that run very regularly, and others that don't, and the ones that run regularly are the ones that run best, almost without exception.

 

cheers

 

Ben A.

[ForestPines]

I wonder whether the current RTR jobs - beautiful though they are to look at - will prove as robust in the long term, and whether there will be people out there willing and able to repair them. Certainly the current practice of short runs followed by total unavailability must raise a doubt as to whether spares will be able to be procured. Perhaps it's just a symptom of the modern way with technology. No one seems to repair washing machines, microwaves, TVs or TV recorders any more. They just get chucked and replaced.

Sounds like an ideal opportunity for the pro-modeller and cottage-industry side of the hobby - producing brass replacement chassis for failed and unrepairable locos.

 

The oldest loco I've tried running recently was an Atlas N gauge diesel that is probably over 40 years old; it was a cheap eBay purchase that seemed to run fine when it arrived. Somewhere I have my dad's 50-something Triang train set, which would run ok-ish with a bit of poking when it was half the age it is now, but hasn't been tried since. Certainly when it was 25 it didn't run as well as the Atlas loco does now.