All this talk lately about Mantua’s has me wondering about vintage steam engines.
Did any of the early Mantua’s ever suffer from the zamac rot? Or did Mantua use a cleaner metallurgy process back in the day than say, Arbour Models?
Has anyone successfully built & operated an Arbour Model without it self-destructing?
What other brands had this zamac rot issue?
Thanks in advance,
Jim
It probably happened to some Mantuas, though personally I’ve never seen any. The Japanese brand New One that produced some die-cast engines in the 50’s & 60’s is notorious for their exploded castings. I’ve seen a few examples of early Rivarossi failure: the tender floors in their early 2-8-0’s and 0-8-0’s (see below), the steamchest on the Lionel/Rivarossi Dockside, and I had a U25C chassis for parts with rotted fuel tank and gearbox castings. There have been a lot of Lionel engines lost to rotting zamac; in fact my mother was given a prewar standard gauge set as a child, and the loco’s drivers had fallen apart by the time I was a kid in the 60’s. I’ve heard reports of some American Flyer equipment failing, but haven’t seen any examples of that myself.
No, Jim, I’ve never encountered a failed casting by Mantua due to “zamac pest.” Mantua, with its long history as a metal-working firm, kept tight control over the purity of the zamac used in their diecasting, which was done in-house, of course. Unless subjected to enviromental extremes, most of their castings are as good today as they were 50 years ago.
As already pointed out by Nelson, not as much can be said regarding the first imported Rivarossi (from Italy by the Polks) and the later 1950’s AHM, HO Train Co. and Aristo-Craft (New One Models) locomotives from Japan, plus some of Lionel’s HO. All were rather famous for disintergrating due to impurities in their zamac and seemingly a lack of talent or, at a minimum, a lack of the quality control necessary to create precise batches of zamac.
The problems with pre-war tin-plate train wheels was usually from a somewhat different situation.
CNJ831
Some of the Varneys had this trouble too…Cox 47