The other day I was running my oldest steamer, a early 90’s Lionel 2-8-2 when a bolt (screw?) backed out and before it was over I had 2 bent side rods and parts scattered along the track. I rounded up all the parts and hopefully got everything straightened out and back in the right place. I then realized I didn’t have the proper tool to tighten things up. I didn’t even know if I was dealing with standard or metric. Most of my steam enginges are late Lionel and MTH (with the new Atlas on the way.) Could someone reccommend an appropriate set of nut drivers and the source that I could use to maintain these engines. Or the most common sizes of whatever tools would be best. Thanks in advance for your help.
I’ve got Craftsman standard and metric. Also have a set of nut drivers and harden screw drivers and torqux bits. If backing out is a problem, you might use a little LocTite [blue, that is not permanent].
You might try Micro Mark,
This is an example of what they have available.
I couldn’t get the above link to work because it’s incomplete–try this one for Micromark
http://www.ares-server.com/Ares/Ares.asp?MerchantID=RET01229&Action=Catalog&Type=Department&ID=21
If you should be buying wrenches or nut drivers separately rather than in sets, keep in mind that 5/16 inch and 8 millimeters are for all practical purposes the same size. Likewise 5/32 and 4.
Probably “screw”. The difference is that a bolt takes a nut and a screw screws into something else. The definition unfortunately makes it impossible to know whether many threaded fasteners are screws or bolts, since they can be used either way. Exceptions are wood and sheet-metal screws, which don’t take nuts, and carriage bolts, which can’t be turned.