Hello,

Would any one of you know how to deal with this plague, i.e. the terrible styrofoam damages caused by the older time-honoured light blue Märklin boxes to the locomotives (and specially) to the plastic tender shells?

Once the harm is done, is there a cure?

Greetings from Montreal,

Armando

I am a bit confused... My old loks (also in styrofoam insets, early 60's light blue boxes) survived more than 20 years of storage in an attic where it was hot during summer and freezing cold in the winter without any damage...

So I must ask the same as Kevin, what are the damages???

Armando, I am very sorry to tell you that I have not experienced any damage to my old loks due to the styrofoam packaging...

But it is an intriguing problem you describe... Is the styrofoam "clean"? What I mean is that other chemicals as oil or such are not involved? Were the locos "stuck" to the styrofoam???

I am curious to know, since I have never heard of this problem before... As I said earlier, my childhood locos were stored away in environmentally unfavorable conditions but survived unharmed regarding the problem you describe...

I have a similar problem with one of my dampfloks that I had apparently put away with some smoke fluid in the smoke generator. I think the smoke fluid melted the styrofoam. I am not currently running dampfloks on the layout and hence have not yet tried to deal with the problem. I would be interested in a solution also (no pun intended). I have considered dabbing it with smoke fluid (the culprit) on a cotton swab but haven't as yet tried it.

No Problemo here either. Had a few boxes from mid 50 stored for over 20 year until recently, no problems found.

Also never heard of it anywhere else. So, if not any rust on metall indicating heavy moist/water it must be oilfluid of some kind. Dont know how aggressive smokefluid could be. The M* lubrication oil from 70-80 was bad but more hardened and makes locos not able to move at all. Are you sure that not a "stupid" guy (hopefully not you ;-) ) been using motoroil as lubrication, cause that would really take the colors off.

Regards /Peter

Hi all,

I have not experienced this problem myself. The two old locos I have have been stored wrapped in paper and outside of their styrofoam boxes. However, I have heard a second-hand dealer in Stockholm describing the phenomenon. In that case it was an old Crocodile that had its paint destroyed. He did not show me, but the problem he described was exactly as Armando describes it. Therefore, I do not think the smoke fluid theory is correct. (Have you ever seen a smoking Crocodile ?)

Maybe normal oil could have caused it, but as the dealer described it it was a "dry" phenomenon.

You could also note that when Märklin use styrofoam packages today there are often plastic sheets etc. around the locos to protect them.

Kevin:

I don't think the problem was directly a result of the smoke fluid. I think the residual fluid in the generator melted the styrofoam, which then adhered to the engine's surface.

I have seen this type of damage before ... and have several loco tenders (Primex) that are brand new but have been stored a long time ... the plastic has actually reacted with the styrofoam cradle and caused almost a melting of the styrofoam pattern into the tender body.

The explanation from another collector was that some of the stryofoam cradles from the early eighties had some solvents outgassing and when stored to long with the locomotive on its side caused the plastic to melt. If you look at the grain of the styrofoam cradles from the early eighties you will see that the expanded beads are much larger than those from the 70's or earlier ... this bigger bead was a different type of expanded foam process than was previously used or has been since used. If the Locomotive fits too tightly in the cradle it makes the problem much worse. It is almost as if you have a process of pressure solution with the two chemically dissimilar plastics.

This has absolutely nothing to do with smoke fluid or lubricating oil reacting with anything ... like I said I have several abolutely new Primex steam engines with this problem. I have some boxes that are almost saturated with oils, and have never observed this type ofdamage to plastic.

I use a combination of isopropyl alcohol and varsol to clean up some
of the worst damage, and then store the locomotive upright surrounded by extra soft toilet paper .... seems to help. In the worst cases I have simply bought new tenders.

Hi 7gauges(love that),all,



More to the story than meets the eye!I am no chemist,but there seems to be several differnt types of styrofoam and many conditions,or lack thereof,that happen here,...
Good luck in restoring your models!