Is it likely that anyone will be making replacement parts in future for my lionel allegheny that is suffering from zinc rot?

I think you will find Lionel and other providers manufacturers  are willing to replace shells that have had zinc rot issues. I had the first Big Boy and it developed a bubble. My dealer sent it back to Lionel and they replaced it for free. This was several years after the release.

Scott Smith

I'd rather be ice fishing posted:

The point of this post is to ask:  in future is it likely that someone will start to manufacture all these small parts that lionel does not offer NO!   or will there be a market full of broken $1200 engines out there with no available parts? YES!   

And not just Lionel, we already have Atlas, MTH and Weaver items with this problem...

My Allegheny was built in the 1990s and lionel had no replacement parts for me nor did they seem overly concerned with my plight.  I ended up moneying my way out of it by buying a whole tender shell with good doors from a helpful dealers NOS and I got the impression that was the last one on earth.  It was not cheap either..Lionel made no effort to help me with some doors from their newer Alleghenies stating the ones they had were being saved for warrantees.  So no love from lionel to me..

SORRY, but you might actually do better with ice fishing after all. Seriously, ALL trains/gauges can be frustrating and disappointing at times; unfortunately, it goes with the territory!

You may not have to wait 10 years...the electronics are sure to go before the zinc....long live PW/MPC.....

In O gauge we're so used to the longevity of PW that I think we've lost track of where the manufactures are going. How old is your TV, cell phone and all of the consumer electronics. The manufactures of our trains are starting to think like they do and assume you will have tossed the trains you bought this year for the "new" ones that they will sell in five years.

Its how it now is.

Tinplate Art posted:

Seriously, ALL trains/gauges can be frustrating and disappointing at times; unfortunately, it goes with the territory!

Wow, you aren't kidding!!!!!!shelf display only, beautiful but useless TurboTrain.  

VISTADOMESCOTT, I like your tiny Airport!

Rusty

Best advice with everything in life: carpe diem! Deal with TODAY and the PRESENT! That is really all we have as the past is gone and who knows if we will even have a "future"! Enjoy each moment as you exist in it and be glad you have it. And yes, I am an existentialist, philosophically speaking!

Scotie posted:

In O gauge we're so used to the longevity of PW that I think we've lost track of where the manufactures are going. How old is your TV, cell phone and all of the consumer electronics. The manufactures of our trains are starting to think like they do and assume you will have tossed the trains you bought this year for the "new" ones that they will sell in five years.

Its how it now is.

All well and good, but I'm not interested in paying a thousand dollars and above for a locomotive that will fall apart, when I can get a Postwar locomotive that's lived through falls off tables, collisions, mice in attics, Rock and Roll and the Bossa Nova, still be fully intact and run after a standard servicing - and not break $100 - $200!

Not any different an issue than at any other time in history in this hobby.  All scales of toy trains have suffered from inconsistencies in the casting metals used for ever.  The reason you don't see it in the older trains is that they are gone already. 

Buy brass instead.  It doesn't suffer from such issues.

Hmm.. I guess I wanted to hear that at any minute cottage industries all over the US were going to spring into action making replacement parts for these masterpieces..I will treasure my allegheny as a priceless antique not to be touched,  I have some legacy gp-30s perhaps those will be ok to run..i do appreciate the responses, it makes me feel that i am perhaps seeing this correctly...

Eddie Marra posted:

All well and good, but I'm not interested in paying a thousand dollars and above for a locomotive that will fall apart, when I can get a Postwar locomotive that's lived through falls off tables, collisions, mice in attics, Rock and Roll and the Bossa Nova, still be fully intact and run after a standard servicing - and not break $100 - $200!

Even lived through disco!

Anyway, the zinc pest problem and short-lived electronics full of proprietary parts is one reason that I like the older two-rail stuff. For example, this FM switcher is over fifty years old and has no real problems:

I have a 455 that doesn't go up or down. I tried new circuit board. No change. Help

All electronic products made today are designed as disposables. When they break you just throw them in the garbage.

It is a shame that in this day and age, that you still face problems like zinc rot that effected the 700e back in the late 30's. Appliances and other consumer products don't last long any more and generally aren't worth fixing, and with cell phones now at the 1 grand mark (and unlike the past, the carriers don't pick up the cost any more), you do replace an expensive item. That said, though, many consumer products like appliances are cheaper than they once were, tv sets today are ridiculously cheap compared to their forbears,and appliances are relatively cheap as well. The thing about 1500 dollar toy trains becoming unusable in 5, 10 years, is that they are not appliances, they are pure discretionary income spending, and something you don't exactly use like you do a phone or appliance, so you are talking something that is relatively lightly used comparitively, that costs a lot. So basically what you have is something that is pretty expensive and might as well have been designed to fail, especially with the electronics, for something that is a pure discretionary purchase (sorry, these days cell phones, especially smart phones, have become so integrated into doing things like working, buying things, controlling things in the house, it no longer is a pure luxury it once was, not to mention try making a call someplace when your cell phone dies...). The other thing is by the time it dies,unlike a consumer good, you likely won't be able to replace it,given these are models of specific engines. You might get lucky and find an NOS someone has, or you might find a used one that is running okay, but that kind of becomes less and less likely, especially given the relatively small production runs for these. 

As someone else said, it is what it is, you are dealing with semi custom product made in small numbers, and you have to buy the thing knowing that there will come a day, not that far in the future, where it will become either a paperweight, or where you revert it to basically conventional operation with a reverse unit to run it. 

The above post is a very good reason to only buy Sunset Third  rail forever brass engines.  A manufacture who actually responds to customers on this open forum.

The person who dies with the best toys is dead.

If I felt the way you do I’d stay with N scale. Why drive yourself nuts worrying about zinc rot. I started in Ogauge mid eighties and own more than 20 premium Lionel steamers and have never experienced zinc rot although I know it’s out there. As far as electronics, there will always be something new to keep you running.

Change hobbies, take up basket weaving.