Care for flood damaged trains

[Anonymous]

Just throw them in a dishwasher. Heck, that works for ol Red. Just don't tell the old lady.[:P]

[brianel027]

Thanks Gil for that post. Certainly this is the kind of thing you unfortunately learn the hard way.

I remember after Hurricane Agnes that hit the northeast in 1972. There was a train shop that got hit hard... everything was ruined. The stuff unfortuantely was a loss for that dealer and had marked it down substantially. I recall there was lots of rust on the frames of cars. The stuff looked utterly terrible. I can't imagine trying to clean the super detailed scale trains being made today in that terrible condition. There's a small advantage to less accurate molded in details.

But I remember buying some stuff and those items became my very first repaint and rebuild projects.

Years later, when I got back into trains, the memories of doing that came back. And I realized I could not afford to buy postwar trains in the condition I would have liked. BUT I could afford to buy them in less than worthy condition and fix them up myself. I would never want to take a desirable good condition piece and redo it, and I've never had to because there's plenty of junk and common pieces out there that don't have collectible value*. I've never felt bad about it either, though in the early 1990's there was still an attitude that doing this was some how against the Lionel Law.

*Of course many trains that supposedly had collectible value in the early 1990's have substantially less today.

[daan]

Let's hope that you'll never need to do it, but the fact is, that there is a real chance oneday. Needing to know what to do is the best start.
Electronics are not damaged by water, but mostly by the salt and other things solvant in the water. If you need to, clean the electronics by rinsing them in destillated water and let it dry. If your electronics have been in dirty water a long time, you probably can't fix it anymore. though trying would be worth it.
Normally, clean water doen't affect the motor or anything else apart from electronics in the train, so rinsing the is best you can do and then dry thoroughly. With a hairdryer for example.

[Anonymous]

There has been a lot of flooding this summer and no doubt you or someone else here has lost some trains and accessories.

This happened to me and here is what I suggest.

Dont let that stuff set around
I had this happen 3 times in a month and couldnt take care of my trains untill months later. They were in a storage locker.

Everything that was wet, soak it in clean soapy water untill you can work on it.

I didn't and the filth and mud ate off the paint, the dampness on what wasn't flooded rusted the rest.

The film of mud is impossible to get off after a while so dump the lot, engines and all in buckets of water to soak out the bad stuff and rinse them several times and dry them out.

Several conventional engines were junked up and rusted solid but by cleaning in running water repeatedly, cleaning with brass brushed and oiling I saved them. I had to hand pu***hem back and forth on the drive way to break lose a few.

After oiling they ran ok. I had to repaint them.

The sooner you soak them the less rust and damage you will have.

Some of you guys up North have been hard, like wise in the South. You may not have the time now to do this what with other, more important loses and needs so as soon as you can just dump everything in large containers of clean soapy water to soak, it wont hurt them any further.

Electronic stuff, I can't speculate on, maybe just a quick rinse and then dry them quickly.

Doubtless many may disagree with me but this worked for me.

Even then I had a lot of work to do afterwards. Trucks and couplers needed wire brushings and iol and all the painted items suffered because do to weather and health, I could not begin on them soon enough.

All I can say is this is working for me now and would have save most all my stuff if I could have cleaned them this way 3 years ago.

Good luck.


Gil Finn,
3435 Rte. 66,
Hydo, OK.