Zinc Rotted 1975 Lionel FA-1 Locomotive - Can We Make It Run Again?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ส.ค. 2024
- I viewer sent in this 1975 Great Northern Lionel locomotive a couple months ago and after testing it I discovered that the motor was indeed in working order however the drive was completely gone. Included was a bag of spare parts and the gears etc were there however the truck seemed to have developed zinc rot which is a major challenge in repairing anything.
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harrison.... great work !!! i had this same engine back in 1975-76 but in sp orange and it was just a great runner !!! we had a christmas train display in the front window to our family business ( a drug store) and someone left it running until we went to the store after church the next day and it was still going !!! if i remember correctly it was pretty heavy and a good puller, too !! keep up the good work !!! ps... i bought it at spoonleys trains in south buffalo,ny for about 20 bucks i believe.
That's one of the best stories I've heard, such a good testament to how well these things were built.
@@SMTMainline dude there is a profile with your name on every comment in every video telling people to text you on instagram for a giveaway, is that for real? If not you should open youtube studio and block this guy from commenting, i do it sometimes on my channel
@@JuanGamer0202 thank you juan.... blessings to you !!
"Riding the rails once again" epic quote from SMT
The magic touch of Harrison prevails again. Way to go! So awesome to see it running so well. 💕😊💕
Thanks a bunch :)
Very Nice Harrison. The MPC era of Lionel lasted from 1970-1986. Lionel sold the tooling to General Mills and operated under Model Products Corporation or MPC beginning in 1970. The HO trains for Lionel trains lasted in various periods and their models are awesome. Lionel Partnered with Riverossi and Athearn in the early HO runs. Mt. Clemens Michigan is right outside of Detroit and Lionel closed the MT Clemens Plant in 2001 and sent production overseas. Keep up the fine work and I have been watching your channel for over a year and always impressed! Happy Model Railroading! EngineerPat5290
Were they still making HO trains there after 86 or did they switch to O?
@@SMTMainline they discontinued the HO trains around 1988. Lionel recently got back into HO a few years ago.
Model Products Corp. was part of Fundimensions too, I build plastic models as well as model trains. I have several "MPC" 1/24 and 1/25 scale kits with that molded inside the bodies.
Wow...kinda like building a car out of nothing but spare parts! Harrison, you are a loco repairing genius!!!! Great job!!!
Thanks, it was a fun project.
model trains are a good part of a balanced breakfast
Of corse
That’s a hecka nice engine
Very nice restoration Harrison! I have a Lionel Santa Fe FA-1 that has the 8 wheel belt drive system. Got the new belts for it but still need to install them. Gotta give Lionel credit, that GN FA looks pretty accurate to some photos and video I've seen of the prototypes, paint scheme looks darn near spot on with the prototype!
For the mid 70s it would have been a pretty good model, certainly better than it's tyco, life like and bachmann counterparts.
The all wheel, belt drive system was made by Lionel from 1959 through 1962. In 1963 they switched to "helic drive" and only powered the rear truck. Later they switched to all-geared drives, until they stopped making HO in 1966. The MPC drive system is much more reliable since rubber won't last forever and the belts will inevitably go bad.
A good, cheap solution is hair elastics, they're not super tight but tight enough. They will periodically need changing.
This reminds me so much of my own. My first model train was a family heirloom that I hold very dearly, my grandpa’s 60s-70s Lionel Texas Special that looked exactly like this one
They must have been some of the best train sets out there for their time
The Shop Boys at Chippewa Northern congratulations you on another fine job.
Thanks
Impressive restoration, always keep all unsued parts
Congratulations, doctor, its alive 💙.
Great job Harrison. I have a huge ho lionel collection. But I use Bachman and athern engines to run the lionel ho cars for the reason you just displayed.
Beautiful engine
I am sorry but I won something?
I didn’t even know there’s a give away
I love watching your videos because they teach me how to get the trains working again
The wizard does it again great job Harrison.👍👌😎🇨🇦
Really beautiful paint scheme. The moment that screw driver slipped I was like ow.. I did notice that the Motor was made in the U.S.A. and says General Electric. Probably the same type motor that they used in some audio equipment or something. Very cool.
They did a fantastic job with it
@@SMTMainline yes they did.
Love the FA's
Nice Job 👍 cool looking engine !
Excelente video, Me da gusto ver todos tus videos soy aficionado a los trenes escala HO tengo varias locomotoras y disfruto el tiempo libre con mis trenes y tus videos.
Saludos cordiales desde Saltillo, Coahuila México.
That was impressive!
You do a GREAT SERVICE repairing your engines. This helps me a lot when I repair some of mine. You take a lot of the guesswork out of the equation, 😊 👍!
Thanks a bunch
Dang man thats a nice looking engine! Sorry that the oringal parts are missing but you got it running so serenity!
Just as long as it runs I'm happy with it.
Way to go👍👍👍! Great job in fixing this locomotive!! 🤩😍 Love the color on the locomotive! Keep up the great work in fixing theses locomotive and diesel engines to get them on the track again and running!
Good job, SMT. That was a real challenge!
Not the worst but it did take some trying.
"Certified Doctor". Well done.
8:22. 50,000 viewers felt your pain there. Great job once again. I wonder if someone sent you a completely disassembled loco, could you put it back together? Who am I kidding? Of course you could!
You never cease to come up with new jokes, I don't know how you do it.
Nice snag from the junk box! I have several junk boxes, but not the luck you had plucking just the right part from one!
Finding the right parts is a challenge, I still can't believe an Athearn part worked in this one.
J.B Weld over what is also called "pot metal" will last forever. General Mills also owned MPC at one time and made model car / truck kits. This is a great example of how a 3d printer can be handy.
Unlike Lionel its a good thing Tyco was never owned by a cereal company. I can see their version of a GG1 or whatever it's supposed to be in a Lucky Charms paint scheme complete with blue and red hearts and yellow 🌙 moons in the paint scheme. ☺
ha ha. tyco was owned at one stage by consolidated foods. Sara Lee
Lucky Charms paint scheme? Hahaha
That’s a mighty pretty loco. I’ll have to get one for my N scale collection!
Awesome video
Nice job l have half a dozen l need to work on that little engine is a beauty thing 👌 for sharing Doug
smt u should make a silicon mold and cast the part if it is in good shape unfortunately they wont be around forever and should do it while u can
Not a bad idea, it might be tricky though.
@@SMTMainline definitely
General Mills Fun Group made a number of toys back in the day, including Vintage Star Wars toys.
It's interesting, I had no idea
Sweet……..I have the gold Chessie System Lionel HO. I used a wooden dowel rod for the drive shaft…….hops like a toad, but whatever motor they put in it, it’s a beast. Toots!
Those GE motors seem pretty tough.
@@SMTMainline 👍
Excellent work. How I remember these FA 1 on The LIRR( LONG ISLAND RAILROAD) CN & of course VIA RAIL CANADA. 2 of the retired FA 1 ex- LIRR is in The Chicago Railway Museum. The second was in weathered still in VIA colors later painted in PC black red P white C at The Danbury Railway Museum in Danbury Connecticut. Metro North Danbury Lines at South Norwalk. I never had a FA 1 in HO scale but Yours looks very good. If you couldn't fix those plastic wheels: Matching metal wheels from N.W.S.L .The ATHEARN parts pass through well. I learned something about the metal i didn't know that's zinc! 😱My old TYCO steam engine frame just disintegrates all these years i thought it was cheap steel i know better now. Thank you for presenting this. I enjoyed watching this.
Harold.
CN/ VIA/ GO TRANSIT. 🍊🍏✅🚄
In New York, we had a FA-1 Long Island Railroad that just look like this. Only at the Danbury Railway Museum in Danbury, Connecticut. Just stop by smh. You’ll love the classics over there.
I got a chassis for the MPC era HO scale Alco FA, it was in pieces but thankfully no zinc pest. A lot of the clips are broken so that's going to be fun to deal with, but the motor is happy last I remember checking. Seeing this video is making me think maybe mine isn't so bad after all!
Something kinda funny I noticed about the HO ALCo is that Lionel used ALCo trucks on both the FA and the GP7/GP9 during the postwar era, but in the MPC era they gave the GP9 the correct trucks, and the FA has the wrong trucks!
Nice rescue!
Was hoping for a fix it video this weekend!
Like this engine
SMT I recently bought a Lionel FA-1 similar to this one! Similar situation, one of the truck covers was broken, nonetheless the Loco still wanted to run. Fantastic Locomotives! 👍🏻
They seem to be fairly tough
It's a joy watching your repair videos. Thank you for posting them, great work on this one!
Thanks a bunch!
Great restoration, SMT! I wasn't aware Lionel did HO trains until I saw the Confederation set at a show, maybe five years ago.
Lionel also had a GP 9 and GP 30 made by Kader Toys out of China. They were extremely accurate at the time (1970's). Kader built a reputation for great mechanisms so when Life Like wanted to upgrade their line they contracted Kader who produced the Proto 2000 engines.
They've been in and out of the HO market several times
Lionel tried HO first in 1957. They just had Rivarossi make their stuff. Then they switched to Athearn in 1958. Starting in 1959, they made their own HO including a bunch of operating cars similar to the O gauge ones they sold at the time. The line didn't sell well and they stopped making HO after 1966. During the MPC Lionel tried HO again but the quality of the drives were a lot better since they eliminated rubber band drives used in 1959-1962 diesels, rectifiers, and the 0642 and 0605 switchers.
Great work as usual I'm doing a couple of 60 year old Triang locomotives at the moment that have been a bit of a nightmare so I feel your pain lol I'm doing them for a guy so he can give them to his father for his 70th birthday they were his father's child hood trains
I've said it before and I'll say it again, you're the Montgomery Scott of model train repair.
Thanks
Aye, that he is.
Speaking of cereal. Frosted Flakes which is a Kelloggs product, back in the mid to late 1970s offered a Tony the Tiger model railroad. It was 19.99 plus 2 box tops sent my mail. I got one for Christmas in 1976 and the train didn't run. It moved 3 inches and stopped. So sad, because it came with enough track to make a good starter layout.
Shame it didn't run but it was an interesting concept.
@@SMTMainline On that Christmas morning when we set it up I was so excited just to be disappointed. Several Christmases later I got the Rock Island Express set from Tyco. It worked for a week then quit. The headlight would work but the engine wouldn't turn. It was one of those pancake motors vintage 1979.
@@jerryspann8713 Just think, if SMT lived next door it would have run like a top!
Happy belated Canada Day Harrison. Awesome resurrection of that FA. One thing I would suggest for trying get those zinc parts back together is to try using a five minute epoxy rather than CA. My attempts with CA on pot metal is it tends to fail easily where the epoxy is good and thick. I'd just add to be careful that any excessive slopping of epoxy to make sure it's on the exterior of the gearbox.
amazing work
To be honest that was kind of funny that you pulled the whole drive shaft out instead of just the black part
The intention was to pull the black part out, the drive shaft just gave way.
Been there I try to pull out one part and it takes everything
Big fan
Nice
Nice
Nice job!!
To make the repaired wheels last longer you could go to the hardware store and get some thin fiber washers (if they are thin enough) and glue them to the backside of the wheels.
Will put this one in the advanced chapter of the SMT manual🚂🇨🇦🙋
Wow how did the rear truck end up like that? I wonder if it fell and it dropped to the floor, who knows what happened? Well anyways great that you got it running again!
"Zinc pest (from German Zinkpest), also known as zinc rot and zamak rot, is a destructive, intercrystalline corrosion process of zinc alloys containing lead impurities."
@@TomLuTon OOF, that is bad, I never knew about that.
@@ATSF2926Productions me neither till I starting watching this channel and other that deal with these types of locomotives. Apparently, it gets so bad that, as Harrison stated in the video, the entire truck casing and even the locomotive frame itself (if made of the same metal type) will literally dissintergrate, it's definitely not pretty!
@@ATSF2926Productions It's a fairly common problem on Bachmann locomotives from the 70s. If you don't watch it, the chassis will expand and ruin the shell. It's a hit or miss issue, some go years without it, others develop it fairly quickly.
@@SMTMainline dang bachmann was going through quite the bad record from 1970's-1980's corrosion in locomotives, to nylon gears, COME ON BACHMANN, YOU CAN DO BETTER!
I live near a museum with a GN locomotive there, I have always loved the GN orange paint scheme. Is there anything you can't fix?
Once of the best paint schemes ever created. And to answer your question, there are times where I am unsuccessful or need to take multiple tries.
Great video! The alco FA was a weird engine, not in design, but in what it was, a freight version of the PA. Although it wasn't very successful there's alot out there still.
I wonder why F-Units were preferred.
@@SMTMainline I think it's because of how successful they were versus how bad the FA units were. I know they'res a good video on the ALCO FA
@@SMTMainline th-cam.com/video/SQdDFjpwefE/w-d-xo.html
Here's the video.
U are the man!!!
If you know someone with a 3d printer you could have the zinc parts printed and then use it to make a mold to recast the zinc parts. I throw all my old zinc parts in a box and when I need a parts I have a friend that works at a machine shop that also does 3d printing and with his employee discount usually costs me $5-!0 to print out my train parts and then I dig through my zinc junk box and melt a few pieces down in a cast iron laddle with a propane plumbers torch and recast many of the parts. It's worth doing when you deal with cheap box lots and if you deal with many of the same trains you can cast several parts in spare time and put them away for the next build.
Be careful with burning plastic fumes. I remember a toxic event. I think it was with styrene plastic, but one whif sent my brain a definite message of danger!
Hi SMT mainline I am about to get my grandpa's 30 year old train and plenty of track what I'm asking is how do I get the train running and how to make sure I do not damage it because it's a good looking one
Give it fresh oil, clean all contacts and get the gaps on the motor. If you don't have much experience working with this stuff you might want to consider buying something cheap to learn on.
Ok thank u
@@EntertainmentCenter365 What brand is it? Diesel or Steam? more details please.
I don't know I haven't got it yet from him
Nice locomotive🤩😎🤩😎🤩😎
I find it neat that the motor in this model is General Electric, just like the real FA-1s
That's what I thought. GE builds engines for locomotives from 1:1 scale all the way down to 1:87 scale
FA-1 was by ALCO, wasn't it?
If you want I can probably machine a replacement as I have access to that kind of thing. I will need dimensions of the frame (as I expect zinc rot will affect the frame too at some point) as well as the gearbox sides.
Hey smt mainline first of that is a great engine and second off smt um my package was sent by ups to you but it was holdup at UPS Canada because I had to give them some more info to get the package to you but I don't know when ups will get it to you cause last time I checked ups website it is in Quebec but it's in the ups building I can send you a pic of were it's at but hopefully this package will reach you soon
I will keep my eyes open for it
Truck sideframes: EMD Blombergs!
I love it
I got a new vintage Coca-Cola train it didn't work at 1st but we got it to work So yeah about that I'm a boy named junior I'm gonna turn 11 soon on July 25And I really like watching your videos They're really cool easy to learn how to do stuff with my new and skill train!!
happy canada day
And to you too
Ive got a old athearn or atlas santa fe PA-1 that i just got running after 45+ years of no running! (edit: it can barely run)
thats a alco FA-1?
That's awesome. Old Athearn locomotives are pretty tough so I'm sure if you work at it for long enough, you will get it going again.
Atlas never made PAs so it’s probably an Athearn
That's a seventies era MPC/Lionel 'HO' Locomotive, The line ran from 1974 to 1977 Their failed second attempt with 'HO' scale.
Nice FA-1 Great Northern in HO scale, Lionel.
Good job in repair you locomotive.
My dog Scooby Doo is friend of you 🐱.
Astro is a nice dog.
Scrappy Doo my pup.
My Scooby Dum is a nice dog.
Astro, my Great Dane.
Hello everyone 😃
Do you know Pete from ticktok who has huge train collection and layout from New York.
I am always happy to see a old engine run again.
12:40 seems to have some conectivity problems just there.
A large isolated frog in the switch.
Hi smt idk if u remember me but it’s msc train and I was wonder what is a good replacement for old 90’s Bachman 4-8-4 cracked gears and axles
I still haven't found replacement parts. It would be nice if someone started making them.
You should run all your f-series locomotives in one/two videos.
I have an old box car that says "God Bless America" on it and being a white boxcar it has a pink stain on one side and I don't know how to clean the poor thing. It would be nice to see the car look brand new considering it's one of my oldest pieces of rolling stock (out of my ownership)
I wouldn't use anything too strong to clean it, I've accidentally removed decals without much effort.
hey harrison, i have something i'd like to ship to ya, but i remember you saying once before you were having troubles with your p.o. box. are you still having troubles?
Things have been arriving lately without issues
well folks
Is this it? Is this the point where smt keeps getting more locos that are odd to people? Odd. Anyway love the video. Also is there any Rivarossi locos any time soon? Id like to see more!
There is another Rivarossi big boy still packed away.
ok so completely unrelated but i got a dog yesterday!
Cool!
I hope you get the HO engine and running
What does that mean?
Mehano was on to something, Making their chassis out of plastic instead of rot prone zinc, If the model train industry was smart they should have followed Mehano lead.
That's one advantage but plastic isn't flawless ether. I've seen warped chassis and the lack of weight doesn't give as much pulling capacity.
@@SMTMainline I'm aware of that, But, It depends on the plastic, If it's done properly it can work, And, Thank you very much for answering my reply.
Hey SMT been watching you for years on safari but I have a account so I love the content and I’ll help you out with your subs
Thanks a bunch
Have you ever cleaned your track if not then do a finger test and if it is dirty then get all of the freight and passenger cars to metal wheels and it will be a lot of less dirty rails
Metal wheels do help. I do clean my track but probably not as often as I should.
yes general mills had a division called The fun group at general mills They made Star Wars toys ,Toys for happy meals. model cars by monogram. and Lionel trains .yes this is the grope that drove Lionel into the ground by producing such ,Things like a a pink Hudson in O scale for girls (that is one of the most collectable pieces Lionel ever made ) that did not sell.
and in the 1970S the The fun group at general mills moved all production to China. this was before China had any manufacturing factory's like that have today.
I have a fa locomotive by Lionel it is a early one that has no traction tires and all wheel pickup and drive and has a massive weight over the motor. about 1 pound .
Do you know about the baking soda and super glue method to repair / rebuild plastic parts? May be useful when you run into broken gears or car / loco shells
Hi smt
Hey
i had a cousin that is named lionel
Hey smt just want to say real quick that if you ever need to replace any rubber bands on a athearn rubber band drive the wonderloom brand will be a good set of spares just letting you know
I've used them and they do work but they don't seem to last very long.
Ok also do you know if there are any compatible chassis for this type of loco
Hey SMT I have a question what brand track do you use for your layout
Wow, nice restoration, interesting made a damaged loco working New friend subscribed, keep in touch.
I think you forgot about your yard there.
Could you use a Walther's FA-1 8 wheel drive chassis and drivetrain with that shell?
Well the Walthers model is much better so it probably would be a better idea to just use the Walthers model and parts bin the Lionel
What's the value of this type of loco? My mind immediately went to 3d printing a case for it to possibly sand casting a replacement part (zinc has a relatively low melting temp)... then I started thinking "Is it even worth the time to do that"
Great job! However I must say that the build quality of this engine is quite bad. I have a much smaller engine from Märklin, which I bought in 1970. One of the cheapest models they had. However its build-quality is simply off the chart compared to the engine in this video. It still runs like new, without a major rebuild or overhaul. Furthermore, it looks like a real engine, not like a cheap toy.
👍🏽😜👍🏽