I’m guessing this topic may have been covered a number of times in the past, so apologies if that’s been covered recently, but I have just joined the forum.
As a kid I bought my first one probably in 1964. Candidly, the quality was horrendous. I remember the main castings both of the loco and tender began to crack. Leaching out of the casting was something white that look like the lime deposits on a wet basement wall.
Unless one can afford brass – which I cannot – finding a 4-6-0 CNJ camel is pretty impossible. I believe Mantua sold one but it was a Reading unit just lettered for CNJ. I have enough of the AHM parts now to create a couple of runners but clearly would want to re-motor them. They originally used a motor with a vertical shaft. A can motor could probably be affixed to the frame as long as it wasn’t much more than an inch in length.
Also, are there ways to repair the castings? Some are obviously beyond repair but a couple are about 90% complete, just covered with that white crud.
In my experience there is no cure for zinc rot, where the metal cracks and expands and warps. Nor am I aware of a preventative although at one time some guys claimed boiling in vinegar did something. The dreaded zinc rot cost me the sideframes and other parts to my best hauling locomotive, a Varney F3 all metal, and also destroyed the trucks to all the freight cars from my first ever train set, a Penn Line set. I believe zinc rot has also destroyed many examples of what many believe was the finest product Lionel ever produced, the scale-accurate NYC Hudson from the 1930s. I know it destroyed my dad’s uncle’s Lionel Union Pacific diesel streamliner from the 1930s.
If all you have is the white dust and not the actual cracking and distortion, at the very least it may be a few years before the actual rot sets in and ruins the piece. But again I am not aware of any preventative that stops or at least slows down the process.
I think it’s POSSIBLE (POSSIBLE!) that the white coating is not zinc rot. You might be able to clean it off and treat it with something that I can’t think of and end up bein’ happy. That term “90%” does not make me optimistic.
BUT.
You definitely have zinc rot if there are dimensional changes and/or cracks. And it will get worse.
You MIGHT be able to use the old parts as masters and make resin castings from them. Now there’s an adventure waiting to happen. There will be shrinkage, I’ll wager. But the extent might be acceptable.
I have an early Rivarossi Y6B that had Zink rot in the frame. I tried the cooking in vinegar thing and that didn’t help, before it crumbled I made a mold of it from Plaster of Paris. I still have the mold but never attempted making a replacement. My intent was to cast a replacement frame from low temp metal in the plaster mold but never got around to it.
I ended up making a brass frame using K&S .030” x ¾” wide strips. I soldered it 5 layers thick and used a grinding wheel to shape the brass to fit the plaster mold. It’s a perfect runner using a Canon EN22 motor. I kitbashed the Y6B shell into a 2-8-8-2 AC-3 Cab Forward.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
I did the Y6B to AC-3 fix/kitbash back in the early 90s and wasn’t taking pictures or documenting anything back then. I did make a couple of brass frames for an AC-10 Cab Forward and a kitbashed AC-9 from a AC-10 last year and did a post on my blog of the construction. I put a bit more into those than I did on the early one. I used a pair of Canon EN22 motors in the newer ones and with added weight they will pull your sox off.
If you want some CNJ Camels, see rdgcasey’s posts on making your own using relatively inexpensive locos as a starting point. He did a clinic on rolling the boilers at the Reading Modeler’s Meet a few weeks ago, and it has been posted on the Reading Modeler web site.
That Fawcett book. I got it, too, back in 1951. It was just before I shipped out for France. Ya know, when Uncle Sam says go, you go. But it was France!
My thing is 1950 SP steam! I have eleven AC-10/12 Rivarossi Cab Forwards, all but one have been remotored. The eleventh was a gift from a fellow model railroader and I chose to keep it original. Five Cab Frowards have Faulhaber 2224SR motors, two have a single Canon EN22 motor three have dual Canon EN22s. I kitbashed three AC-10s into AC-9s, one has a Faulhaber 2224SR one has a single Canon EN22 and one has dual Canon EN22s. I have two Y6Bs kitbashed into AC-3s with Canon EN22s and a third is now an MC-1. I have one original Y6B on the shelf.
Encase you can’t tell I enjoy restoring Rivarossi articulated locomotives.
The Canon EN22 is a very impressive motor, I lucked out about 8 years ago and bought 10
Since my post, I did some general research and found that zinc rot is incurable “cancer”. Many people – including collectors of WWII medals, diecast airplane model collectors and many others – have posted a world of info on it. There’s even a Wikipedia page for zinc rot (Germans called it “zinc pest”). It stems from lead impurity in the zinc and eventually causes the cracking, swelling, breaking and general disintegration.
I’m glad I looked into this because the white deposits contain a lot of lead, so even handling the pieces requires gloves. Didn’t know that! Also removing the deposits by sanding or any method that would produce dust would be dangerous without a respirator.