Hey all,
I don’t know if this has been posted before but here goes.
Just a while ago I unpacked some Lionel stuff from the attic.
And to my dismay all the plastic knuckle coupler springs were broken.
It looks as though the springs break if you keep the knuckle closed in a cold environment.
My suggestion is, if you store your trains in the cold,keep the couplers open
or they might turn out like mine.
Looks like i’ll be looking for about 50 new coupler knuckles,and rivets.
Carl T.
Carl, as a general rule it is a good thing to keep the couplers open when the cars are not in use, whether a metal knuckle with an actual spring, or a delrin plastic knuckle with the “spring” as part of the plastic knuckle itself.
I’m surprised this happened to the Lionel cars though I don’t know how cold your attic got. I’ve had better luck with the plastic Lionel knuckles over the K-Line ones. I’ve even replaced some of the K-Line knuckles with Lionel ones, although here you will need the new rivet as the mounting holes in the knuckles between the Lionel and K-Line ones are both different.
Carl, you should be able to reuse the rivets from your current couplers and just get replacement knuckles. Maybe get a small quantity of extra rivets just incase you mess them up too much when removing them. But if you are careful, most of those rivets should be reuseable.
Not to do a commercial here, but Jeff Kane, The Train Tender carries these parts. It’s been a long while since I ordered, but I recall getting the knuckles from him at a bulk rate discount by getting 25 count. And if you are out of NYS you won’t have to pay the sales tax. A good guy to deal with and recommended by others here too.
My Dad used to pack our trains in his attic until he started noticing RUST, eewwwhhhh,I hate to say that word and trains in the same sentence.Our area is very humid pretty much all year and even with an insulated attic collection of moisture is inevitable.So my advise is to avoid attics all together.Luckily we got our trains out of his attic and into a cabinet in a moisture controlled room in my house.Heh,also a good way to run the "seldom run " trains at my house [(-D].
I, too, would advise being wary of attics as storage places for trains. If they are excessively cold in the winter, they’re probably excessively hot in the summer. Neither condition is good for toy trains and a lot of other items.
I don’t know where you live Carl but here in NYC the outside air seems to attack plastics something fierce. All my motorbikes have had premature failure of plastic components which seemed to develop cracks, dry up or perish in less than two years. I had ‘rubber’ (really plastic) gaiters covering the springs that went bad in a year along with the fuel hoses but the replacements in my bedroom are still good five years later. My bikes stored in an unheated garage so conditions are probably attic like.
Anything outside in the City gets covered in a blackish dust which feels oily, (diesel/fuel oil/jet fuel?) and that stuff is obviously corrosive.
“It looks as though the springs break if you keep the knuckle closed in a cold environment.” From my experience in this un-cold environment, I’ll agree with the first part of this: “It looks as though the springs break…”
Good rule of thumb is to not expose your trains (or anything else that really matters to you) to an environment that you wouldn’t want to spend extended periods of time in yourself. This includes extreme heat/cold/dust/humidity (or lack thereof)/insect or animal infestation. If you are going to store the stuff for exteneded periods of time, protect it.
chuck
I could use some thoughts on this…
I keep all my trains in the family room in the basement. We control the humidity and heat so there is no problem with the trains themselves. I do store all my boxes in the storage space over the garage. I keep them in plastic storage containers so they are protected from mice if they get up there. We do have extreme hot and cold so the temps see both extremes. Is there any problems storing the empty boxes this way?
Thanks, TomS
If you are really concerned about preserving the boxes you MAY want to consider breaking them down and storing them in a vacuum type bag (space bags). This is starting to get a little weird, matrushka dollish, empty boxes in selaed bags in plastic containers.
Good idea chuckn.I was up in my attic above the garage tonight, putting some collector cars that a buy for my boys,in large plastic tuperware type containers.I haven’t been in some of those containers in a while,so I just started looking thru them.The boxs and some of the flat card containers were warping or flexing due to the heat and moisture level.Now I store lots of thinks up there in that attic,and it’s the first time I ever noticed anything like that happening to boxes.Wonder if it’s got anything to due with the way they make boxes now a days?The oldest box or card is from around 1993.I never have noticed it out of older boxes I have stored up there.[%-)]