Getting Granny's HO Train Running for the First time in 60 Years!

Well folks, in today's video we're going to try to get my grandmother's childhood

train

running

for the

first

time

in about 60

years

. It is a German River Rossi 224 Atlantic steam locomotive and has not run since about 1959. It has been in the family. for almost 70

years

, but as you can probably see, it has definitely seen better days now. I want this to work for two reasons: the

first

reason is obviously that it's a family heirloom and I think it would be really cool if it worked again, but also, in about a week he'll be 81 and I think it would be really cool if he could run his childhood

train

for the first

time

in about 60 years in his 81st, so yes, it will be a challenge, there is definitely going to be a lot of work to do, but I think it will certainly be worth it if we can achieve it now.

Some of you may remember that this is not the first Atlantic locomotive of yours to have been repaired. Up the Channel was actually created with the intention of

getting

his River Roi Hawaa

running

again and he was able to get that train running again in 2019, making the project a success. Hawa will also be renovated, but I will go into Later, for now, I will slowly excavate some of these parts and tell the story of this train because, unlike most things I work on, I now know a little of its history from what she told me. He bought this engine for Christmas, I think sometime in the early 1950s, say 1953 or 4.

I don't know the exact date, but it was sometime around that time and the family appreciated the train for probably a few 5 years and then. in 1959 everything was packed up, she ended up moving to Canada and her family ended up moving to Australia and she had the belief that everything had been thrown away and that the designs had been sold or thrown away and the same with all the Rolling Stock, so she thought that all this was gone, but sometime around the 1980s her father passed away and she went to Australia to deal with the inheritance and while she was going through everything, she was rummaging through some boxes in a closet and that's.

When she discovered that the locomotives had survived, they had not been scrapped, so she was very happy, but unfortunately during those years they were in storage. Worse yet, she didn't have much space when she brought all this stuff back to Canada, so she had to pack all the locomotives in her suitcase and when she got to the airport they were throwing all the bags down a slide and she said. that there were a lot of fragile things in her bag and she asked them if they could take it down to the bottom, in a different way, but the woman just threw it away, so everything that already had zinc stink was removed and when she came back to Canada you know he opened his bags and this is basically what he found so this engine has definitely had a bit of a tragic life over the last 60 years or so, but I hope we can open a more positive chapter as we move forward.

You can probably also see that there are other children's trains here that I really want to fix, but these are air conditioned, so they won't work in my layout. I'll have to build something separately for them, but there will be an advantage. with this one that I'll show you very soon, well I think that's it, a lot of the important components are here, the chassis, I would say that's the worst part, there's really nothing left here, the zinc staff from Pest and Airport. I really did my best to try to dismantle this locomotive, but there is one saving grace and that is that they still make parts for these locomotives and I was able to import some, so let's get them unpacked.

It is notable that they still make parts for these River Roosi locomotives. I guess it must be some X River Roi employees if anyone is wondering the resource is called River Restore and is a pretty good distributor. The parts certainly aren't cheap, but I've dealt with them before and get feedback from people who ask all the time. where you can get parts and most of the time when you are looking for parts there isn't much in terms of aftermarket for HO and so scale trains except used parts, notably with these River rosis that is not the case . now I don't really know what is what here and there are many parts that are not only for this locomotive but also for the Roi hawaa river the idea is that I want to have enough parts to be able to keep these locomotives running for at least At least while I am here and not I know how much longer they're going to keep making these reproduction parts, so I have a ton of spares here too.

I think this could be a backup chassis for the road, but we'll have to see here, yeah, so this is a backup chassis in case something goes wrong with the high waas, if let's say it develops zinc blight or something. so again, we have those pieces, but for our uses, uh, that is. It won't be necessary. I love the boxes here, that's interesting. I ordered a set of replacement wheels for the Hawaa, but they sent me a complete set. That is incredible. So for anyone who doesn't know the Hawaa, there were a few pieces missing. Because some of them were damaged so I ordered some extra spare parts that way the locomotive can also be restored to full working order so it will be given a facelift at the same time as it is rebuilt which I think will be So. pretty good, I have some spare ball bearings for the motor, I have some new brushes, more brushes, these will be important for the tender extra parts of the motor and here is the main part of the operation, this is the chassis and if we compare it . that with what's here you can see how much material is really missing here.

I'm certainly glad to see this. I was a little worried because it is much smaller than the hawaa chassis. I was expecting it to be a little longer, but here I actually ordered factory grease for these models to try to keep them in the best condition possible. I love how vintage everything is, it has some new cylinders, a new worm gear and new shocks. I don't know if they are going to be necessary, but I noticed that the originals are missing a bit of metal on the top, so it is an option. I want to use as many original parts as I can if you replace everything you are basically building a separate train. but we will see what is needed and what can stay.

We have various hardware that I think we are going to need. This is for the engine. I was really hoping I could fix the original engine, but there's not much there so I don't think that's going to work. You know, I went overboard with the hardware, but then again, you know when you're importing this stuff from Italy, the last thing you want to do is notice. I'm missing something after I imported it because it takes them about a month to make these parts and ship them, so that should be all we need. Hopefully this will work.

You know, I'm a little worried because it's hot to do this, but let's start disassembling the current drive system, get rid of all the junk parts and then slowly but surely try to build this from the ground up, so here's the bottom of the gearbox. I think this piece should be reusable, although there is some paint or something stuck to it that will need to be removed. The zinc pest is stuck a little on the rear wheels. There we go, the difference is really just day and night and you. I can see cracks forming like this part here, it probably didn't have much time left before it completely disintegrated, so I think the first order of business before putting these two pieces together will be to clean this whole thing up.

Because, uh, it's pretty bad, as you can see, so I think we'll take some warm soapy water, get a toothbrush, and gently scrub everything together so there's not too much resistance or mess. Let them soak for a moment and look at some of the other parts. These aren't too bad, but they definitely have a little bit of grease on them or something, so they're also going to clean this bottom with some isopropyl alcohol. I think zinc blight is caused simply by impurities in the metal, at least that's what I've heard, but I've heard rumors that moisture can speed up the process.

I don't know if that's true or not, but I really don't know. I don't want to take any chances with this, it's interesting how they added insulators to both sides. I hadn't seen that before in a rosi river. I think that's how it happened. You still know if this is cut later, what could it be so that everything is tidy, I think we can attach the wheels to the chassis, yes, there we go, so it looks like there is a small screw that I assume should go there, connect this piece of metal there, so I'll have to take that into account, but I think for now I'll try to attach this part here, put a little drop of oil in there.

It's very strange for me to see all of this together because in all the time I've had it, it has never looked like this. An annoying little screw in there. I think there is supposed to be another nut and bolt holding it together. I don't know if I still have the original somewhere, so I'm going to go through the parts I bought to see if I can replace them. with that, if not, we'll come up with something that looks pretty good. I think at this point we'll focus on putting this in place. I ordered a replacement because honestly this looks a little warped, but that's what it is.

I want to use as many original parts, they have character, you know, they tell the story of this locomotive, so we'll see if it can still be recovered here. I definitely think I'll have to fold some of these pieces back into place. a little, however, everything is attached to me. I'm going to stop by here and see if I can find the plate that's supposed to cover the worm gear, yeah, part of the old motor, well, not what we're looking for, but I. I think this might actually be part of this locomotive. I don't know, unfortunately I don't think he's here.

I didn't realize they had already packaged these things with ball bearings. That's good. I felt like this part here wasn't going to be in place. so I dug through my Spin parts and located the original worm gear and I'm glad I did because you can see they're not the same so it's lucky I still have all these parts because I can load this up with some new ones. The bearings put it in there and it should work and these two parts are already adapted to each other so it should actually work better than a new one out of the box so now it's the next morning.

I wasted a lot of time. I looked for this board last night, but it's all together and I'm really happy with how it looks so far, so I think we'll move on to assembling this whole front area. Now I have a little confession, which is that Obviously, this connects to something under here and I think I found that screw, but this piece is damaged and I thought I had ordered the correct replacement, but clearly I wasn't paying attention. This doesn't look like that in any way. It's a two-wheeled unit, so I think I'm going to have to find a way to try to put this all back together.

See, this is supposed to be added. It is a very thin piece of metal and is also supposed to hold a wheel. instead, so I think what I'm going to do for this is score the metal and add some kind of reinforcing plate because I don't think this can stand on its own. I also found this screw, right? Here, which I think is what's supposed to hold this all together, although it's going to have a nut on top of it because I think this is damaged. I could be wrong here, but I don't see anything like the weight this would ruin. so I guess this shell had this piece of metal here and this probably came back here so it was like a C clip with the hole to thread the screw in that seems to be gone so I'm going to have to add a nut in there same, well, the glue has dried.

I know there will be someone out there who won't be very happy. I put a little bit of glue in there, but this is seriously compromised and you know you can see the wheel turning. Okay, so I think it should be fine. I'll add some reinforcements to this and then I think we'll call it a day on this piece. I know it looks super messy, but I really want to make sure this never falls apart. Again, well, it's about half an hour later and I'm pretty happy with how it looks, you know, it's not the prettiest thing out there, but most of the strong things in the world are made by combining two different materials, like fiberglass. glass and resin concrete. and rebar and here we have Tim plate and zinc latch so everything is good now the driver side of the wheels should match this that's where the wiper is so we're going to throw them in there too because of the way we I did in fact.

Put that backwards so I'll have to fix that at some point but for now just throw that in there put some oil in there I'm not going to put a crazy amount because I really don't want that to seep in there and cause problems it seems be okay. I really hope these wheels don't short out this metal because it definitely has some zinc stink on it, so it expands Ed and it's bigger than it should be, but we'll give it a chance. Again I want to use the original parts. We also put some AC on top of this because this holds up well, but I just want to make sure it doesn't vibrate and let all of thesepieces become loose and should break.

If I ever need to take it apart again, okay, let's give the gearbox a good test, which so far seems to be turning as it should. Yes, I think this is supposed to wrap. Out there I'm not sure if that's doing what it should, but at least everything is spinning correctly, which brings me to the next point which is actually connecting the motor and that's going to be a challenge, let me show you why, so here's the frame for the original motor and you can see that there are a couple of holes here that the screws would be threaded into, so the idea is that the motor would mount roughly that way anyway.

I knew the engine needs to be mounted there now. Norman Cory sent this engine here. unfortunately the holes don't line up on that one, it doesn't look very good, I think it might work, I have to find some way to get it out of there, it's notable, the River Rosi designers didn't switch to this because this engine is probably around from the 1960s, I mean, it has a little bit in common with this, but yeah, yeah, for the number of years it's been new, it's kind of notable. I guess I'll have to light a torch here.

Heat this up and try. to remove that gear you should really invest in a gear puller there we go ok let's see if that heat damaged the motor it's good as new river roses are amazing now i need to find some screws to put them together and i also need to calculate In a recent video, Norman Cory provided me with some sort of driveshaft to join the two parts together. Norman Cory provided me with a ton of different docking solutions. Here he made all these parts himself. He works on many Riveros locomotives. Now obviously you know he didn't have this exact model so he had to guess what he would need and that seems to fit pretty well there but the only thing is that the engine drive shaft is not splined like on the gearbox so which if you connected to this it wouldn't be a problem but unfortunately that positions the motor incorrectly so I'm wondering if you would get out of this with a Dremel if you could maybe cut the driveshaft. a bit to fit right into this part, it doesn't look too bad if you ask me, so that's pretty close.

I think I might have to shave this off a little. Okay, so fast off camera. I just removed this piece. plastic here and we cut the metal driveshaft there, so now this fits very well there, it's almost perfect, so I think we'll screw this in and then test the mill and see if it's even powerful. enough for this locomotive, okay, I think it looks pretty good, let's try to give it some power here, oh, it's trying, yeah, okay, I think it's okay, yeah, starting to accelerate, come on, you know, a lot of these pieces have not been moved in 60 years.

Maybe everyone needs to sit up a bit, so with this almost back together, I think we'll now focus on the shell, as I mentioned before. I'm pretty sure this piece of metal isn't supposed to be that way, so try modifying this a little, check it out, the original headlight still works, it's very bright, it doesn't have much voltage so I don't know how much life It fits that filament, but it still works fine, so I think I'll replace this broken one. piece of metal and cut the bottom of this so it's flush with this weight and try to maybe hit something into the metal, well I just went and quickly drilled a hole in the weight here, so what I'm thinking is that we'll be able to put a screw over here and just touch it there and anyway we'll see if it actually works now, okay, I soldered this new wire here, so I'm going to run it through this place.

I think it is for this purpose with the locomotive more or less together. I think we will focus our attention on the tender which is also in pretty bad condition. I found this screw that I think is the original one that passed through here. At some point this other one broke the plastic. I don't know why they decided to build it like that, but it certainly makes life a lot easier putting things back together. It's a lot more glue than you really need, but I want this. to be nice and safe and now we can remove the original truck and replace it with the new ones I bought.

Well, I managed to round all the wheels. It's interesting that one of the axes looks different from the other, but I don't. I think it really matters too much now, it's important that the insulated and non-insulated sides go on the same side, it doesn't look that bad in my opinion. I wonder if these are supposed to be spring loaded from the other side, which just doesn't look right. To me, yeah, that seems a little more likely, so I'm pretty happy with how everything looks so far, but before I try anything, I just want to quickly polish the wheels.

I bought a Dremel, so for the first time. I'm going to use the shock absorber to try to clear the wheels. I don't know how this will go, but I'm willing to give it a good try here, well it's a while later and the wheels are definitely on. They look much better, they are not as bright as I would like, but it is certainly a big improvement. I think I need to learn a little better how to use the buffer alone to get the right amount of compound, etc. Either way, I think we'll connect this cable, fix some cosmetic details and then take this to the track and see if it works or not now, as we discovered earlier, we have this part but the other. one wasn't too far away and River Rossi has a great design, you see how the pins are lined up differently on both sides so you know which direction to put them in so I think that's the ticket, I think it definitely shows a bit.

Better also I just rubbed this with a little soapy water and cleaned up a few spots here and there and I know it's not perfect, the paint could certainly use some work, but it has a lot of character, now let's get to the cute stuff here. I think this is just going to need a little bit of soapy water, well it's all dry now and I think it looks a lot better, so now I just need to run this cable over to the tender and actually hook it all up, I also need to put a some kind of pin in there so we can connect the locomotive.

I'll try to solder it there originally there would have been a pin here but unfortunately I don't have that part anymore with all that nice and connected I think I'll do that. just throw a screw through here to try to connect the tender to the locomotive. I know some people probably don't like the idea of ​​a permanent connection, but the cable is also permanently connected, so if one needs to be removed, the other needs to be removed as well. can still move well enough so it should be fine, so for the first time in 60 years let's put this on the track and see if it will do anything for us, this will really be the last Moment of Truth for a locomotive that has been sitting since 1959, starts well, here goes nothing, yeah, yeah, yeah, look at that first time in 60 years, it's doing pretty well so far.

The current consumption is a little high, but that's not too bad even within the H tolerance, let's give it a little more. speed up, this is working very well. I'm really surprised at how smooth it runs, like it doesn't look like a locomotive that's been sitting still for 60 years. I can't express how happy it makes me to see this working again. I know when I was younger, I was 12, I spent so many hours trying to get this thing working again and I never really thought I'd see it, so yeah, this is just fantastic. I think it needs a little refinement, maybe a little. of extra oil just to make it run a little smoother because the actual drydown is slightly high, but this is actually quite noticeable.

I think the tender needs a slight adjustment, although it's a little crooked there, okay? Uh, tender, everything straightened out. Another thing I noticed is that the headlight didn't seem to be working, so I tried removing this cover and see if I can figure out why. Check it out. Is working. The lighthouse is all fixed. I decided to just get in quickly, put a coupler on the back. Here I chose the German style coupling for obvious reasons. Now I don't have a lot of German rolling stock, but I do have about five freight cars that I bought a few years ago and I think they're about the same era as this locomotive and they should look pretty good behind it, so let's hook them up. everyone here, it's been a while, huh, oh, Harry, my goodness, anyway, the reason I wanted to bring you here is because last month I rebuilt one of your childhood trains, so I imported parts from Italy and everything was ready again oh, I was talking to you about yes last night, yes, anyway, if you want to make it work, just turn this knob right here, oh, this way, yes. oh bless your heart oh oh I can't believe it look at her oh you're amazing and look here she comes seeing her it's like seeing the EXP Spirit um Ori Express coming M oh that's the Bigg ch that's absolutely oh this is the most magical Easter at Christmas and the sound that was telling you about the night of sound.

It would never Dre work, you did, oh, the whole load is this expensive original, yes it is, yes, mhm, I know, I didn't know her. I remember it and this is the one I remember the most because there were more of those Raymen. They should have had seven more. I have it all again. I just need to put a new engine in it. Uh-oh, it's wonderful. Imagine that it was like that. it was huge because it was a huge room, no well, it would be two of these and, uh, the whole living room for two days and of course we just sat there because at Christmas, all the shop windows, especially in London, had the large corner windows MH. have the CH running and of course all the kids are watching, put them wrapped in plastic very carefully, we stopped in Vancouver and they were wrapped in a suitcase and I told the girl please don't throw them away.

I was throwing my stuff on the floor and she broke a bunch of China, it was the trains and it was heavy mhm and um, she just shot it and all I heard was clang clang break break and uh, what a horrible person of both of them, well, I will do that. I'll show you what I started with, so this was me slowly, uh rebuilding it all, oh my goodness, well you'll never sell them, oh you sure won't, and if you have little kids, can you imagine? Oh, they'll love it. You're dusting everything, cleaning everything, well, you're amazing and it worked the first time, so this is, oh God, you must have been excited, oh yeah, well, I didn't know, I didn't know if it was possible, you know, even with not all the new parts because when I showed them and then gave them to them it was like a lot of garbage it would really be like giving them a box of little bits like this mhm well friends that will be all for today's video I hope you like it We all enjoyed it.

I am absolutely thrilled with the outcome of this project. It is simply incredible to see this locomotive running for the first time after being stored and collecting dust for so many decades and to see my grandmother's reaction to being reunited with one of hers. Childhood trains are priceless, so I think overall this project has been a great success. I want to thank you all for your support over the years with the hawaa project, which you now know led to the funding to be able to restore this locomotive and I also want to give a special thanks to Norm who sent a bunch of spare engines and the axle transmission that I put on this locomotive, which was a great help.

I don't know if the project would have worked without his help. Thank you so much. Norm anyway with that I just want to thank you all for watching.