Zinc Pest In An Atlas RS-3

While almost all model locos have zinc/zamac frames, the problem of zinc pest has declined in recent decades, though it still occurs. In particular, a run of Atlas RS-3s from the mid-2000s seems to have had a bad batch of frames. As it happens, many of the road names in that run appealed to me, and I got several. All have gone bad. The annoying thing about zinc pest is that it takes years to develop, so once you find it, the loco is past the warranty period. My occasional interactions with Atlas have never been satisfactory, so the heck with it.

Recently I saw a Lehigh Valley RS-3 on eBay. I paid maybe a $10-20 premium for it in the first place, since it was a road name I liked, especially since I'm now a big Mike Bednar fan. Once I got it and opened the box, it had -- you guessed it -- zinc pest. The frame behind the couplers had expanded and pushed the steps out and up:

Below is a closer view.

I'm not sure how the seller concealed this from the condition photo in the listing, but he did. On the other hand, his response if I'd complained would simply have been to tell me to return the loco, and I wanted the roadname. Who knows if an LV loco would ever come back on eBay, and if it did, how much would it be?

Lately I'd been looking at how to fix the zinc pest with my other RS-3s in that batch, and I'd already ordered a replacement frame from Atlas, so this would be a good test case. The new frame would cost money in addition to the premium I'd already paid, but it is what it is, I wanted this loco.

As soon as I took the shell off, the frame began to disintegrate. Here the coupler mount simply fell off one end:

The frame was just bowed up on the other end, but I've already found that if you just try to straighten it, it will disintegrate.

By the time I removed the motor, trucks, PC board, and weights, the frame had mostly disintegrated. This was all that was left:

Here I've begun reassembly onto the new frame:

And here things are back together, including a Digitrax DH165A0 decoder to replace the factory board. The only good thing here is that it's a fair amount of work to replace the PC board even on an RS-3 with a good frame, so at least the work here isn't completely wasted.

And here's LV 215, ready to show up in a Pechulis Media DVD!

I have about four more RS-3s to do this on, but at least I've now worked out how to fix them.