Dad bought me a lionel 19142-100 train set and a 8111 diesel when I was 7yrs old and run it every Christmas since.
I’m 64 now and in 2024 rekindled a love for my 19142-1000 train set, Iadding a 2018 steam locomotive and a dozen rolling stock.
I have recently researched what I have and learned quite a bit on (Primarily Lionel) history and. Feel i have moved from beginner to amateur in a short time.
My question here is:
I see the term “Lube” used differently or loosely with some sites. I understand gears, axle take grease and other mechanism take oil.
Does the term “Lube” mean something else or just a verbal preference?
Apologize for the rookie question, just for my piece of mind.
‘Lube’ is short for ‘lubrication’, which is the use of materials and techniques to reduce friction and wear. The catchall term for the agents used is ‘lubricants’.
Semantically this is a bit like the use of ‘weapon’ instead of ‘gun’ in military-industrial-intelligence-speak: a way to be “precisely imprecise”. The correct type of lubrication for one application may not be suitable at all for another, but the underlying principle is the same. Note that there is actually an even-nerdier term for the study of lubrication: tribology.
We can always say ‘grease the gears’ or ‘oil the bearings’ as appropriate; we can specify the precise type of, say, LaBelle lubricant by number just as we can order combo meals by number, without having to describe the type’s characteristics. When I work on watches, I have up to six distinct types of lube that are custom-formulated to work best for particular parts in particular types of mechanism – how much of this is European snake oil to sell insanely-expensive-by-the-ounce bottles of potion, I have never been wholly sure.
Something to think carefully about is how much lubricant is needed to accomplish proper ‘lubing’. In watch work, almost the minimum amount to accomplish the desired purpose is used – we have tiny oilers with precisely-shaped tips to facilitate this. Any ‘excess’ becomes a dust and contaminant trap, and as the lubricant ages it can harden, gum, or acidify into something that can become worse than no lube at all. Real diesel-electric locomotive traction motors use a fairly large amount of sticky lubricant (formerly known as ‘crater’ and one of the most execrable substances to get on you even in tiny quantities) to prevent expensive gear wear under heavy line load, and you often see hobbyists or even manufacturers applying this ‘principle’ to complex gear trains by filling up much of the available space with grease, where proper thinking would only lightly touch the engaging faces and pivots of the gears and worms. On the other hand, in older O scale applications, the gears are designed for more lube in a ‘bath’ for longer service under greater load.