In a Box or On the Tracks?

[eastcoast]

[:)] I live in a region that sees all four seasons. During very long
periods of time when my trainroom is too cold, my trains are put
into the boxes. Now, when I do operate the trains, mostly they will
sit out on the tracks stagnant for awhile waiting to be called into
duty.Both engines and rolling stock sit out in the air and dust for the
long periods of time in the rail yards or sidings.
Which leads me to this question;
[?] Do you feel it is better to let the trains sit on the rails this long
OR
would it better serve them to be in the boxes until next time?

[8D] I have tried both ways and make sure that tracks are maintained
and parts are lubed and engines spun and warmed up before pulling
a load and have not ( yet ) had a big problem.Just want the input.[8D]

[cacole]

The Cochise & Western Model Railroad Club is located in an unheated building. I store my HO scale trains in cabinets or leave them on the layout, and other members do the same. Other than dust settling on items left on the layout, I can't say there's much difference to putting them in boxes if the boxes are also in an unheated area.

[SilverSpike]

It probably depends on the humidity and temperature ranges for your neck of the woods! If the train room is not getting any type of air conditioning or heating then it is exposed to the varying changes of temperature and humidity. The layout I grew up with back in the 1970's was in an un-air-conditioned building that was heated with electrical space heaters during operations only. The rolling stock and engines began to show signs of rusting and the brass track was always a cleaning chore. I attribute most of the rusting and degradation issues with the exposure issue. Although the layout was covered and contained within a building, the humidity and temperature extremes proved detrimental to the equipment over time.

If your equipment is running smoothly, then continue doing whatever it is you do!
If it isn’t broke....

- Ryan

[rrinker]

Most stuff we have right now lives in a box or on a shelf, as the layout is currenty under construction. Even a single 3' section of flex track has enough whippign power to sweep cars and sometime slocos ont he floor, so the rule is, NO WORKING if there are cars and locos anywhere ont he layout. They have to be put away first. It's bad enough when a tool gets knocked to the floor and you have to try and pick it up because you need it, but in the meantime you need to hold on to whatever it is you are working on.... Plus there's dust from the foam, glue spray, etc that I don't want all over my rolling stock. Once we reach some reasonable level of completion where the cars can stay ont he track but FAR from any work area, pretty much everything I have will be on the rails at all times (I don;t have all that much). My father in law has FAR too many cars to be left on the layout all the time, otherwise it would look like the UP freeze from after the SP buyout, or NS's freeze up after the Conrail split - every track loaded with rollign stock that can't move because every yard track is already full. So that stuff will have to cycle on and off the layout as desired. I'm thinking some sort of drawer arrangment like I've seen in some magazine articles, padded and closeable to keep the dust out, a LOT more convenient for storage and retrieval than the original boxes - not to mention many of the boxes are NOT the actual ones and so don't have accurate labels on them. Organized by type and then alphabetically by road name sounds like a plan - "Boxcars A-H" "Boxcars I-M" etc. We'll see...

--Randy

[Anonymous]

I keep a stack of boxes under my workbench. The rolling stock are in them. There is a note book that is supposed to tell me which box such and such a car is in.

The valuables such my BLI steam stay in thier orginal boxes in a area that is free from wild temperature changes etc. I do have a engine or two out on the bench (analog) for the purpose of testing newly built rolling stock on the track.

[Anonymous]

I try to leave stuff on the track.. if we are talking about an assembled layout. I find that handling the rolling stock breaks stuff, bends details and rubs off weathering, so I try to handle stuff as little as possible.

[darkstar974]

Well for now my stuff is boxed up and in storage awaiting the time for the layout to be built but that is not going to be happening anytime soon seeing that the newly appointed CFO of the PB&Y has not agreed on a budgetary amount for the new railroad so all my HO stuff is in storage for now in boxes[:(]

[Leon Silverman]

Ken:
It may not be necessary relube your trains everytime you let them stand for a while. It took my trains a couple of laps around the layout to warm up themselves. I would give them enough initial throttle to move at a liesurely pace. The train moved noticeably faster without touching the throttle setting after completing those laps.
Secondly, excess lubrication tends to go into places where it is not beneficial. To paraphrase a popular axiom: "if it is lubricated, don't lube it."

[Anonymous]

I have a small layout in which the stuff stays out and don't have
a problem doing it. My tempurature does not flux all that much
and I am able to keep it that way. Boxes are still around in case
I move.

[Anonymous]

I do both. Some cars and engines I leave on the track and others I put in a box below my layout. The temperature stays fairly constant so I do not have to worry about that. The main thing I worry about is dust and the Sun. The Sun can really kill a nicely painted loco.

dwfin1985 (UP fan)

[Jetrock]

I'd rather leave my equipment on the rails--my feeling is that the cars get the most rough treatment when I'm picking them up, so even if they don't get dusty in a box, if I leave them in the yard they don't get fingerprinty or part-brokeny!