Curious About Valvegear Wear

[TheFlyingScotsman]

I am wondering if anyone has ever run a loco to the point something wore out on the valvegear like a rivet or whatever. There must be some real high milage guys around here. If you did how long did it take and did you find it to be recoverable?

Or any other component for that matter.

It's certainly not happened to me, touch wood, but I'm not the type to run night after night.

I'd say the bulk of my stuff is 15 - 20ish years old, but have some new bits and pieces though.

[RR_Mel]

I have a MDC 0-6-0 switcher that is my first HO locomotive back in 1951.  I never kept track of how many hours of operation any of my locomotives have run but the older ones must have thousands of hours on them (four layouts, 60+ years) and I haven’t had any with valve gear problems.

I have a Rivarossi Cab Forward that I bought new in the early 90s that must have hundreds of hours of run time.  For years it has run continuously on my twice-around mainline while I worked on scenery, many days around 10 hours and has never had a problem.

EDIT:
Everything on my MDC 0-6-0 is original except the frame, it took the long drop and broke off a front step in the early 90s, I called MDC and they sent me a replacement frame at no charge.  I really miss MDC, that was a 40+ year free replacement part.

Mel
 
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951 have



My Model Railroad    
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
 
Bakersfield, California
 
Aging is not for wimps.

[Trainman440]

From my experience, I think the first to go on a loco is usually the gears. And thats more from age rather than actual run time.

a properly lubricated and maintained loco should last a lifetime.

Charles

[Southgate 2]

Before anything else that matters, except cheapo plastic gears, most locomotives will wear the nickel plating off the drivers where they contact the rail. When buying on ebay I look for that as an indicator of milage. Dan

[dknelson]

There are Mantua die cast 4-6-2s and 2-8-2s a-plenty out that still have the original valve gear after 65 and nearly 70 years of running, and some Lionels in O and O-27 that are even older.

I would suppose however that for the Mantuas at least (and the similar Penn Line/Bowser steam locos) that proper assembly of the valve gear by the original modeler has something to do with it.  You had to space the parts so that the rivet did not create an over-tight bond.  A small piece of bond paper was usually suggested, picked away afterwards or maybe even burned away with a match before final lubrication.  

Some of the Japanese and Korean brass manufacturers used very small screws for portions of their valve gear assembly and while the parts did not wear out the tiny screws had a way of disappearing

Dave Nelson

[BATMAN]

Years ago there was a guy on YouTube that put some new locos on an oval of track that was maybe 40' of track. He just turned them on and never turned them off and they just kept going and going. Days, weeks, months, maybe years. I stopped checking in after a while. That was probably ten years ago now. They could still be going for all I know.