Rivarossi Locomotive from 1960s

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I inherited my grandfathers HO scale trains recently. He passed away 30+ yrs ago and the stuff has been in storage since then. It’s all 1960s vintage stuff. One of the engines is a Rivarossi locomotive(0-8-0) with the drive in the tender coupled to the engine to drive the engine via a plastic shaft. No markings on it other than a 280 on the tender. In any case, the locomotive has some repair issues, missing some parts. Is it possible to acquire replacement parts? Any ideas where? Been looking on e-bay but it’s near impossible to find the exact same engine. Is it possible this engine is worth the trouble to fix? It has sentimental value so that in of itself is worth going to the effort of fixing it.

There are also some plastic and metal locomotives that are in good shape but likely need new motors(Mantua shifters). Also has some diesels(Athearn). Is it worth the effort to rehabilitate these units?

Sorry if these questions have been asked a million times.

2

You might contact rivarossi about the 0-8-0. Im sure they dont make that exact engine anymore but the new parts might be compatible. Also look at places like northwest short line (reffered to here as NWSL). The athearn diesels should be easy to repair (you cant break those things) and once you get them fixed they should give you many more years of service. If they have been sitting around for 30 years they may just need a good cleaning and some new lube. The mantua shifters are a toss-up in my book. They wont fetch too much on ebay, but shouldnt be too hard to fix either. Its really up to you.

3

Hello,

I would try contacting Golf Manor Hobbies for parts.

Golf Manor Hobbies
Cincinnati, Ohio USA
(513) 351-3849
(513) 631-7574 (Fax)

www.golfmanorhobbies.com

4

I agree with fwdguy call Golf Manor ( website is at: www.GOLFMANORHOBBIES.com)they should have the parts. Rivarossi was bought out by Hornby a while ago and despite Hornby’s Rivarossi listings anyone in my area that deals in Rivarossi dont’ have any idea when they are going to get parts, new release locomotives or cars.

5

Considering the age of the Rivarossi, it might not be worth trying to rehabilitate because it no doubt has deep wheel flanges that won’t go through Atlas turnouts or crossing diamonds without stalling. If you want to make it operational, you’re going to need Peco track or another European brand that can handle a European locomotive’s wheels. My old Rivarossi models are just display items.

The Athearn’s are worth cleaning up, lubricating, and running.

6

I am sure that is the Indiana Harbor Belt 0-8-0. Rivarossi has modified the engine since and even by the late 1960s I think it had the engine in the cab. In its day the detail was considered exquisite. Tender drive has its problems – it tended to be noisy and sometimes the tender would shake in an odd way. And of course the pulling power was reduced because you were pulling a heavy tender. But I recollect that as being one of the better tender drives, next to the old old Mantua “general” 4-4-0. The common advantage they had was that the tender could be somewhat heavy.
My own advice would be to set the 0-8-0 aside and not put retail dollars into repair parts, but keep an eye out at swap meets for one. Assuming your tender drive still works and the missing parts are more or less cosmetic, almost any Rivarossi/AHM IHB 0-8-0 should be raidable for parts. These were popular train set engines in the 1960s (anyone remember the “Thunder Line” of trainsets?) and with luck some kid beat up his engine but did not destroy the parts you need.
I was at the swap meet in DuPage Illinois two years ago and a guy was selling an entire box full of Rivarossi 0-8-0s for $10 each.
Dave Nelson

7

Yo Boss, what I tell everyone it to look on E-Bay, you can find almost anything there.

8

It has a marking of 1515 on the bottom side of the locomotive. Not sure if that means anything. I’ve looked at some of the pictures on the internet of the Indiana Harbor Belt 0-8-0 and this doesn’t appear to be it. The locomotive I have has far less detail in it than the Indiana Harbor Belt units I’ve seen on the internet. My grandfather wasn’t a rich man and I suspect this unit might have been a bottom of the line Rivarossi. As I understand it the Rivarossi’s were expensive back in that day(and they appear to still be pricey).

9

I’ve heard of people turning down the deep flanges with a file…but I don’t know how wellthat works. Maybe you could replace the wheelsets with newer items?

As for the Athearns, the parts are still available, and their engines tend to go on forever. They’re easy to work on and run well. My old F7 recently took a trip to the workshop floor, and was fine…other than having a bent handrail or two, and the cab windows knocked out. But, it still ran great :slight_smile:

10

I’ve got a bunch of old equipment from that era that I’ve pulled out of the attic this year. I was able to get 1 gear-drive Athearn F7 running well enough to install a decoder, but I did need to add power pickups to the other half of the wheels to maintain good contact. The rest of my Athearns, 1 gear and 3 belt-drive units, don’t run well at all even after cleaning and lubrication. I did put decoders in a couple of them, but they ran so poorly that I cannibalized the decoders for something else, took out the motors and now they run as dummies.

My father-in-law gave me some Rivarossi 0-6-0’s and 0-4-0’s that he had. Most have the very large flanges, and they won’t even run on flat Atlas code 100 flex track, let alone make it through turnouts. The flanges bump up against the ties and lift the wheels clean off the rails. One of them, though, has smaller flanges and runs around well enough that it will get the full couplers-and-decoder beauty treatment one of these days.

Before you put good money into restoring those old diesels, take a look at what’s available in new equipment. After buying a P2K GP-9 brand new for $40, I realized that I couldn’t restore the innards of one of my old ones for that, and the new models have such better detailing, too.

11

Do you have a picture of the 0-8-0? And what kinds of parts are missing? If it’s just detail parts like bells and handrail wire, then you could replace those easily.[:)][:)][:)]

12

The part that it’s missing is unfortunately the metal plate that covers the gears/wheels on the bottom side of the engine. The coupling appears to be missing a part but that could easily be fabricated from metal tube stock. That metal plate is a different story. It looks like it’s flat for the most part but I am guessing there’s a punched relief for the gear that protrudes from one wheel. Or is it typical for that gear simply to be exposed through the plate via a hole in the plate?

One part of the front “cow catcher” is missing(excuse my terms if they are wrong). That’s just cosmetic, although important, isn’t a show stopper. Otherwise it is in flawless physical condition.

I believe I can get this thing into runnable shape if I can either fabricate or find a replacement piece to cover the wheels.

I’ve confirmed that 1515 means it was a yard goat. I found an old auction that sold one.

I could post a picture, what’s the standard way of doing it on this forum?

It’s getting fairly inexpensive these days to do sheet metal fabrication in prototype quantities. I may go that route to fabricate the bottom piece and the missing coupler if I can’t find another used unit.

I appreciate everyone’s input, it has been very helpful in helping me decide what I am going to do here.

13

I believe so. I have two old Rivarossi steam engines and the gear just comes through a square hole in the plate. I think it would be easy to make a new one.[:D]

You have to register an account at a photo website like Photobucket.com. It’s free if you use Photobucket. Then you copy the link to the picture and put it in two boxes that look like this: [ img][ /img] (leave the spaces out for it to work)

And it’s just that easy.[:D]

14

I use http://www.railimages.com for my postings. It’s “free,” but a small donation is appreciated.

You could probably make that cover plate out of styrene rather than metal. It’s cheaper and easier to fabricate, and it’s also an insulator in case you derail - the styrene won’t short across your tracks.

15

Some Rivarossi steamers need the metal plate. My 0-6-0 gets half of it’s power from the electricity going through the metal plate. If I got rid of it, I’d have to build some extra ugly contact strip outside the frame to get power.[:0]

16

235301,
I was going to try and get you answer to you this morning but had to leave for the day, but I have an answer for you on the age of your 0-8-0, it was actually made in the late 1950’s. This loco was made by Rivarossi for about 4 years, like 1958-1962 or so. They did not run really good either, I purchased one back in the 80’s and tried like you to get new parts for it, bad news, there are none. Rivarossi made three veriations of the 0-8-0 yard got so to speak.

The first is the one you have that was made from 1958-1962. You see one of these pop up on ebay, but not often, The tender chassis has a bad habbit of crumbling, the diecast would just crack and fall appart. They also made a 0-4-0 that had the same problem, but it was the steam chest that would start to crumble. I am not sure but some of the early Rivarossi diecast was really lead casting, not sure though. The loco you have was the first 0-8-0 produced and was nothing like the later ones that were made, in looks and running .

The second design was a totally different and had the motor in the firebox with a attatched gear box to the front of the motor, which in turn went through a drive shaft to a worm gear, then to the drive gear on the wheels. This design worked well and ran really nice, even had good slow speed response, but the motor was a large left over sized motor from the older loco’s like yours, they were a square looking type, 3 pole motors. It was made from 1969-1974 AHM/Rivarossi.

The third is with the motor in the boiler with the shft pointing straight down with a worm gear attached and driving the main drive gear on the wheels. This had the round 3 pole motor, but still had problems with week motors. This loco had the same look as the 2nd one, it was made from 1974-1977AHM/Rivarossi.

As stated as by other members it has very large flanges on the wheels, larger than normal. You can cut them down on a lathe or sanding, lathe works better though.

As far as remotoring, yo

17

[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by ICRR1964

235301,
I was going to try and get you answer to you this morning but had to leave for the day, but I have an answer for you on the age of your 0-8-0, it was actually made in the late 1950’s. This loco was made by Rivarossi for about 4 years, like 1958-1962 or so. They did not run really good either, I purchased one back in the 80’s and tried like you to get new parts for it, bad news, there are none. Rivarossi made three veriations of the 0-8-0 yard got so to speak.

The first is the one you have that was made from 1958-1962. You see one of these pop up on ebay, but not often, The tender chassis has a bad habbit of crumbling, the diecast would just crack and fall appart. They also made a 0-4-0 that had the same problem, but it was the steam chest that would start to crumble. I am not sure but some of the early Rivarossi diecast was really lead casting, not sure though. The loco you have was the first 0-8-0 produced and was nothing like the later ones that were made, in looks and running .

The second design was a totally different and had the motor in the firebox with a attatched gear box to the front of the motor, which in turn went through a drive shaft to a worm gear, then to the drive gear on the wheels. This design worked well and ran really nice, even had good slow speed response, but the motor was a large left over sized motor from the older loco’s like yours, they were a square looking type, 3 pole motors. It was made from 1969-1974 AHM/Rivarossi.

The third is with the motor in the boiler with the shft pointing straight down with a worm gear attached and driving the main drive gear on the wheels. This had the round 3 pole motor, but still had problems with week motors. This loco had the same look as the 2nd one, it was made from 1974-1977AHM/Rivarossi.

As stated as by other members it has very large flanges on the wheels, larger than normal. You can cut them down on a lathe or sanding, l

18

[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by 235301

[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by ICRR1964

235301,
I was going to try and get you answer to you this morning but had to leave for the day, but I have an answer for you on the age of your 0-8-0, it was actually made in the late 1950’s. This loco was made by Rivarossi for about 4 years, like 1958-1962 or so. They did not run really good either, I purchased one back in the 80’s and tried like you to get new parts for it, bad news, there are none. Rivarossi made three veriations of the 0-8-0 yard got so to speak.

The first is the one you have that was made from 1958-1962. You see one of these pop up on ebay, but not often, The tender chassis has a bad habbit of crumbling, the diecast would just crack and fall appart. They also made a 0-4-0 that had the same problem, but it was the steam chest that would start to crumble. I am not sure but some of the early Rivarossi diecast was really lead casting, not sure though. The loco you have was the first 0-8-0 produced and was nothing like the later ones that were made, in looks and running .

The second design was a totally different and had the motor in the firebox with a attatched gear box to the front of the motor, which in turn went through a drive shaft to a worm gear, then to the drive gear on the wheels. This design worked well and ran really nice, even had good slow speed response, but the motor was a large left over sized motor from the older loco’s like yours, they were a square looking type, 3 pole motors. It was made from 1969-1974 AHM/Rivarossi.

The third is with the motor in the boiler with the shft pointing straight down with a worm gear attached and driving the main drive gear on the wheels. This had the round 3 pole motor, but still had problems with week motors. This loco had the same look as the 2nd one, it was made from 1974-1977AHM/Rivarossi.

As stated as by other members it has very large flanges on the wheels, large

19

OK, gotcha, must be the older model, confused on my terms.

OK, pictures:



20

WOW! It looks to be in really good shape, Really nice pictures! The one I have like this is in bad shape and a shelf warmer.

The last one I seen like yours was last fall at a train show in the original box and looked as good as yours. If you do take the tender apart, be very careful, the tender chassis is made out of diecast and is old, it might crumble or break in half.

As good as shape as yours is in it might need a good cleaning and some lube is all.

Is the bottom plate on the bottom of the loco missing, or did you just take it off for inspection?

ICRR1964