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Wow! That’s a mess. You don’t live close to the ocean, do you? It’s like the salt air is working on it.
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Ha! I live in West Michigan. The only salt around here is on the roads.
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I’d be curious exactly what those trucks are made out of. Did you lubricate the trucks at all? Did they come factory lubricated? It’s possible some lubricant attacked them. I don’t really know though, it sure looks odd.
Is it just affecting the bolsters, or the truck frames too?
-El
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I did put some lubticant (Labelle 106) on the trucks where the axles rest. The entire truck is falling apart. I want to replace the trucks but often sellers don’t print the wheel base. The two axle truck has a 1" wheel base while the 3 axle truck is 1-1/4".
Labelle is known for making plastic-safe lubes, would be pretty odd if it was causing issues. And it wouldn’t explain the trucks disintegrating in places you didn’t lubricate.
My inclination would be, if the truck side frames were ok, to build a new bolster out of styrene to replace the original that is clearly falling apart. But if the side frames are shot too, that might not be an option.
-El
The side frames are falling apart as well. The wheels are barely staying in the side frames. I’m going to have to replace the trucks!!
Could the trucks have gotten hot from an electrical short?
I don’t think so. Heated plastic may deform, warp, melt, or burn… but it doesn’t disintegrate like this. It looks like whatever material was used is breaking down. It’s very weird.
If it’s the result of a poor choice of materials, I would imagine that other people have experienced the same issue. Perhaps the truck frames were made of resin, rather than injection-molded plastic, and the resin isn’t holding up.
-El
If it was an electrical short somewhere, wouldn’t that affect the operation of the engine? Up until now it’s been running fine and pulling 9 passenger cars. Also, wouldn’t an ellectrical problem affect my other engines? It all started with the rear 2 axle truck on one side. You’ll see in the photos where I had to fix the truck with a piece of styrene to hold it together. The axle shaft on the 3 axle truck was touching the electrical pickup and appears to be melted. I’m baffled.
Clearly some sort of corrosion or melting or both?
Labelle 106 would not have caused this, but I have to ask. Why did you lube them and why 106? Labelle 106 is gear grease. If anything you should have used a small drop of a light oil like Labelle 108.
It would be interesting to know if others have had failures like this.
Sheldon
I used a tooth pick and placed a small tick of Labelle on the axle just to prevent wear. It was the only grease I had at the time. I know…poor excuse! I do have 108 in the drawer now.
I’m curious too, to find out if others have had this problem.
Doesn’t appear anyone else may be having this problem. In the meantime I need to start looking for replacement trucks. Attached are the wheel base dimensions. This is very hard because suppliers don’t often supply the wheel base dimensions. I’ve already had to return two sets that were way off.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Good luck on your project. Let us know what you do.
Thanks. I’ll be getting the boxes out today for storage. This could take a while before I can get this loco repaired.
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To my untrained eye, it seems like the worst damage is where metal touches the plastic. Points where the electrical pickups being worse than the wheelsets.
Some of it kind of looks like heat damage, but not a very hot heat source. Could the batch of plastic have been contaminated with something that’s reacting to electricity?
I guess you could say you’ve literally “ran the wheels off.”
Jeff
The mention of heat damage has been brought up before. I’m almost inclined to agree but I don’t have the knowledge to investigate the source. There’s probably some electrical equipment that could be used but that is out of my realm.
Here is what the truck is supposed to look like:
The axle tips were designed to ride in bronze strips. Somewhere along the way your trucks have been butchered by whomever added the additional hardware under there. If there was a chemical reaction to the plastic perhaps it was caused by the solder flux which may not have been properly neutralized?
The rest certainly looks like heat damage.
Here’s a writeup about how a decoder was added to the Hiawatha and the source for the above photo:
I think your only hope might be to contact Scale Trains, who purchased the remains of Fox Valley Models.
In fact the proprietor of Fox Valley, Matt Gaudynski, is now on the staff of Scale Trains. Perhaps they might be able to locate a pair of trucks for you.
https://www.scaletrains.com/fox-valley-models
Good Luck, Ed
Ed,
Thanks for the contact info. I sent a note to Scale Trains and hope they respond next week.
The trucks on my loco looked like those in your picture when I purchased it 8 years ago.
I’ll let you know what I find out.