How to take care a of my Train?

[Sascha]

Hello.My 0 Series Shinkansen and my Kato M1 set finally arrived and more tracks are on the way. 

How long can I let the train run without breaking it, and how do I take care of it?

Any other things I should keep in mind?

[katoftw]

Trains are like babies - do not drop, do not leave in sun, clean when dirty.  It is that simple.  Store them in their case when you are finished.  And every now and then wipe down the track pieces with a dry cloth to remove dust.

[railsquid]

 do not leave in sun

 

I had a weird dream that I left my Shonan-coloured 113 set on a windowsill in the sun, and came back to find it had melted into vaguely train-shaped orange-green blobs

[JR 500系]

I've heard regular oiling tends to help with the motor maintenance. For some reason, I felt my E651 motor is too dry and made cracky sounds when it runs...

 

Track cleanliness is about the most tedious maintenance portion in a layout, but if you have just a set-and-play layout then it shouldn't be much of an issue.

[1954G]

A few thoughts on taking care of your Kato 0-series (most of these tips apply to any model train):

 

If you need to dust off the model, use a can of compressed air.  

 

Exercise care when raising/lowering the pantographs.  They are quite delicate. 

 

When doing maintenance on a train, it's handy to have a soft surface (like a rubber mat or a sheet of bubble wrap) on your workbench.  Paint is easily damaged. 

 

Keep your tracks clean to ensure smooth running and avoid having headlight flickering.  I use isopropyl alcohol from the drugstore and wipe the rails clean with a rag.  Isopropyl alcohol can dissolve paint, so keep it away from your trains/painted stuff.  

 

 

I don't know the maximum time you can run a Kato 0-series; I run my 16-car formation for 30 minutes to an hour each session.  It's an incredibly smooth-running train, though, so you could probably run it for at least twice as long without problems.  

[HantuBlauLOL]

do train models have a life-time too?

[kvp]

 

do train models have a life-time too?

Yes, but like with real trains, as long as you can find replacement parts for the ones that wear down, you can run them forever. The parts that wear the most are the parts that are moving: motor brushes, motor commutator, motor bearings, transmission, powered wheels. There is also some wear on the pickups, the bearings and running surfaces of the non powered wheels and the bogie pivots and lastly on the couplers and if you have working pantographs, then on those too. I've had to replace almost all of these on various old stock, but luckily not everything on the same model.

[katoftw]

Many trains will last forever.  My trains will not.  Dropping them off the table/layout or having child stand on them is normally end of life. haha

[HantuBlauLOL]

Many trains will last forever.  My trains will not.  Dropping them off the table/layout or having child stand on them is normally end of life. haha

 

that's what happened with my Tsubame.

[Claude_Dreyfus]

The basic maintenance of a model train has already been mentioned here...store in boxes, keep clean, don't drop, keep track clean, but wear and tear does take place, especially on an exhibition layout.

 

Yamanouchi Oshika attended a number of shows - a few of which were two-days. The layout was 16' in length, which essentially give a full circuit length of 32'. The average show-day lasts about 5 hours, and with about 6 trains occupying a the fiddle yard for each circuit, this meant they would complete a circuit of the layout around about 60-70 times. That is a total distance covered of 633 metres a day, so for some of the trains which would be used both days (the EH200 for example, before a second one was purchased to help out) travelling nearly a mile (a real mile, not scale!) is certainly not unknown.

[E6系]

... and keep humidity low ... :D

[railsquid]

I live in Japan...

 

Anyway, my home "office", where my layout lives, has windows on both the west and south sides. The ones on the west side are three narrow slit windows and don't really need curtains from a privacy point of view, but since putting the layout there I noticed how much sun they get in the morning, especially during summer, and I can still see the outlines of the track which was placed there as the surrounding boards have "tanned" somewhat. My task for tomorrow is to put some curtains on those windows, because anything plastic I leave out will be sure to degrade pretty quickly otherwise.

 

So... keep your trains out of direct sunlight.

Edited September 22, 2014 by railsquid

[Sascha]

I have tall windows, but I live on the ground level, and there is a tree in front of my windows, so sun is not a problem. Humidity on the other side is a big problem here since it rains a lot, and we have %100 humidity most of the time. I'll see what I can do about that.