I recently purchased a few “spare” Spectrum steam engines. (Shays, 2-6-6-2’s and 's) as some of these engines are not being produced I thought I should stockpile a few spares.
My question is since I have no intention of using these engines anytime soon and they will be in storage.
What would be best for these engines? Store them without breaking them in or should I break them in and then place them in storage?
I have been informed by a member of the local model railroad club that if you are not going to be running the engines on a regular basis you should not break them in, wait until you will use them on a regular basis.
I understand that by not breaking them in I will not know if I have any problem engines and would forego the free warranty period and only be entitled to repairs/replacement with the standard service charges applicable.
I would give them a full visual inspection and operational evaluation, but not run them long enough to break them in unless the operation is questionable at first.
That way you will identify potential warranty fixes at once, and get them taken care of. As you mentioned, if you wait until you need to put them in regular service the warranties will probably have expired.
Once checked out, they can be safely stored (hopefully but not necessarily in a climate-controlled space) for as long as necessary. I recently reactivated a couple of catenary motors which hadn’t turned a wheel for over thirty years. Inspected and lubricated, they are now in regular service.
If they are just for spare parts, it is six of one, half a dozen o’ t’ other. If you want working engines that seem right in all respects, by all means run them and determine if there are faults for warranty purposes. If all you want is clones for body parts…
As for storage, it’s a crap shoot. As Chuck alludes, careful attention to ambient conditions will go a long way toward preserving your “parts bin”. Ideally, you would remove all traces of lubes and then seal them in bags purged with nitrogen…dry nitrogen. That way no lubes could morph into weird stuff over time and there would be very little oxydation.
In the real world of finite resources, wrap the engines in something that will be a neutral barrier between their paint and any plastics/foam packing. Tissue paper might be okay. Then seal them in their original (purpose-built) packaging and store them in a cool place where the humidity never exceeds 65%. A basement floor is actually a great place to store things long term. Wait!! I have three butternut squashes left over from 2007 that are speckled and lighter than when they came in from the garden due to water content loss, but they are in perfect condition. They rest on the concrete slab. Put a layer of newspaper between your engine boxes and the concrete. You should be able to store those engines indefinitely.