@AJH4 posted:Do you find any plastic or other damage to the rolling stock and buildings being left in the garage? What about the electronics? Some plastics in attic spaces can warp or discolor, but I have never noticed that in a ground level Florida garage even though it gets very hot. Tents and other treated fabrics and foam (like in helmets) seem to have the most problem from just garage heat and humidity, but I was wondering about train layouts and the cars. There are garage doors openers and sprinkler controllers with electronics that sit out there and have no problem and plastic sporting and other equipment. Not feasible to A/C at this time, but would like to store some trains, sets, and accessories out there and build a layout as well, but want to hear from the experts first.
I suspect keeping the stuff in the garage may mostly be around how you keep it. You have to keep in mind that a garage door opener and a sprinkler controller and the like are designed to be in the garage, they assume it won't be climate controlled (unlike let's say an electronics unit used inside the house). There are sprinkler controllers for example they tell you are to be mounted inside only, others can be mounted outside.
I suspect with train stuff it will all depend. I would be leery about storing even post war trains in a florida garage with the humidity there, and with trains or transformers and the like with circuit boards in them heating up like that might cause problems. The plastics likely will be okay (keep in mind that an attic gets temperatures into the 130+ degree range in the sun), if the items are stored where they don't get sunlight on them (UV rays fade plastics). But if you have high humidity, if the items are in boxes and that could potentially cause problems with the boxes. If you had to store some things in a hot florida garage, the risk would prob be lower with structures and even most rolling stock, I wouldn't store engines in there or something like modern transformers and command systems.
