I am keeping about 15 engines in a cardoard box in an unheated room. Everyone knows that Maine winters are pretty cold, and I am wondering if the cold weather could affect the locomotive mechanisms.
I don’t think the cold will hurt them. Just let them warm to room temperature before you try to run them so any lubrication will be warm. I kept most of my unused equipment in an unheated garage for years without problems.
Some lubricants or greases seem to solidify and not “melt” again (as owners of some of the original LifeLike Proto2000 locomotives might recall) - even without cold but probably made worse by cold. So you may have some work to do cleaning up the gears once the engines are going to be used.
I’d be more concerned about moisture when temperatures change, or if you remove the box from the cold into the heated house.
Dave Nelson
ok thanks guys
cold is not as damaging as heat ,but cold makes things shrink so other than lube the only thing would be a slight gear or gage shift ,for lube i use silver goop antiseez (colided silver) one app last forever(5 or 6 years) if you don’t like price of SG then use C5A.
It doesn’t get cold here in Bakersfield but never the less I think the 25° to 28° winters took out the axle gears on all three of my G gauge locomotives. I stored them on my storage yard tracks on my patio during the 2004/2005 winters. After replacing the gears twice I started moving them inside for winter in 2006 and haven’t had a cracked gear since.
The driver/gear/axle replacement on the Bachmann 2-8-0 Consolidation isn’t an easy task. It didn’t get easier even by the sixth replacement, that was my last fix after keeping them at room temperature.
EDIT:
My experience with the high temperatures, 105° to 112° summers on my patio, hasn’t been bad at all. The only problems with my G gauge Consolidations during the hot summers has been varmints, pets, ant’s on the rails, spiders, spiders, spiders and bird droppings. I use Lubriplate on both my HO and G gauge locomotives, never had a problem.
I would worry about large swings in either direction from about 60 deg F. By large I mean 50 degrees. Those extremes invite problems as alluded to by several responders above. Shrinkage if cold, and volatiles evaporating more readily from lubes if too hot.
As Dave said, though, when you take the items into a warm and somewhat moister environment, leave them packaged for about 8-10 hours if you can so that you don’t get condensation building up inside the shell where the ‘works’ are, and where the lubes are.
This is North Dakota… We do not have air conditioning in the summer, so I usually do not work in the train roo min the summer… But winter is no problem we got lots of steam heat.
ROAR
thanks guys but im talking about really cold tempatures. Like as low as -4 degrees here in maine.
Hang on …
What part of Maine doesn’t get below -4deg?
I’m in southern NH and we usually see -10 / -20 at least once each winter …
You’re saying hang on… I’m saying that I’m getting a raw deal… [:|] [#dots] [|(]
NW PA has hit -10 at least a week straight the past 5 years running, and hit -35 twice last year, and -40 a few times during the last 5 years, including a -44 last winter… So, not only is Alaska warmer than NW PA, but so is Maine?!? [:(!]
That’s just so wrong on so many levels… [|(]
that was last year. and last year was a very mild winter.
"That’s just so wrong on so many levels… "
It depends where you are in Alaska. Parts of Southeastern may not even get down to 0F at all during any given winter. The interior, however, can see 60 below or lower. -40F is almost routine.
Unfortunately, the commercial weather guessers that you see on TV tend to emphasize wind chill instead of real temperatures because wind chill sounds worse and they can be even more alarmist, so now it has become necessary to qualify any winter temperature quotes. All of the above are real numbers.
CG
I actually had one dimbulb try to convince me that water left in a bucket outdoors would freeze at 42 degrees F because the wind chill was 27 - “Five degrees below freezing!”
Here in Sin City the temp is headed below 40 for the first time this season - and there’s a brisk breeze as well. Back when I lived in Rapid City overnight temps well below zero F were common, and we went for well over a month when the temperature never got above zero. That’s why I define cold as, “Can’t drive a thumbtack into the ground with a sledgehammer.”
All of my rolling stock lives in my non-climate-controlled garage, which is usually at outdoor temperature. Of course it’s all plain DC with no onboard electronics more complicated than a diode bridge for directional lighting. The ambient temperature seems to affect me more than it affects my locomotives…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Which is one of the reasons I moved. Where I am in California the temp stays mostly in the 62-72 all year round. Sure we get the ocasional dip or spike but not more than a couple weeks a year in a bad year.