Hey All Y’All!
I have a Mantua 2-6-6-2 saddle tank loco that needs some repair work on the valve gear on the engineer side front cylinder. The other three cylinders look okay. It looks to my like the gear is bent and/or out of sync. [?]
Any ideas as to who I can contact for this repair?
Model Power now owns the rights to Mantua products. Give them a try and see if they can help you. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have a Web site and don’t advertise in Model Railroader or Railroad Model Craftsman magazines.
The guy that stares back at you in the mirror every morning. [:D]
Seriously, they are fairly easy to repair, and you can get suitable - though not exact - parts from Bowser. Or you can salvage the parts off a Mantua 2-6-2, or another 2-6-6-2.
Do you mean this one?
The Mantua locomotives were all originally offered as kits, so they come apart and go back together in a straight forward fashion with no special tools. If you take care on disassembly (lay the parts out in the order they came off and don’t loose any) re assembly is straight forward. Even better is to make some sketches or take photos as you take it apart.
For parts, I would go to some train shows looking for a junker. I would expect to find a non-working scruffy looking unit for $20 or so.
The valve gear is secured by tiny rivets, which are a one-time-deal. You want to find replacement rivets. I think I saw some in the Walthers catalog, they are available somewhere. You mentioned that the problem is the valve gear? Could it be that a rivet has fallen out and all that is necessary is to re rivet the parts? This is easy to do, you merely peen the rivet over by squeezing it with ordinary pliers.
Thanks for all of the replies, guys!
I’ve sent a parts request to Model Power to see what they have. I see they still have the engine available, so maybe still have the parts.
I’m not real sure what is wrong and/or happened. I put the engine on the test track for the first, added a little power, it moves a 1/4 of inch either direction. So, must be a bind. I looked at the valve gear and three out of four are good to go. the other one, looks different and i can see obvious bends and what not.
(Oh, to answer any unasked questions, this was a blind internet buy. [V] What can I say. [:I] Only the second time I’ve been bit out of a several hundred purchases.[:)] Normally, folks in my hobbies trains, slot cars, plastic models, are decent folk. [tup])
Being a die-seasel guy, steamers ain’t my bag, (but, always liked the looks of these puppies) so my skill set ain’t up to snuff in this area.
I’ve thought of the picture idea and then trying to rebind the pieces back, but, they don’t look like they will take a whole lot of bending before breaking. Well, I guess I’ll see what the tech guys at Model Power say.
Updates to follow.