The corrosion thread has become sufficiently long and buried that I thought I'd put this up at the top. The subject was how to prevent corrosion on preserved rail equipment, and the lessons that could be learned from the Aerospace industry.<p>I just spoke with a rep from a leading training firm, which offers a comprehensive aviation corrosion prevention training program. It turns out that they also have an instructor that specializes in training courses on corrosion prevention in industrial applications, and he said it should be no big problem to tailor a course to the rail preservation audience. Given the quality and expertise that these folks have, it'd probably be a very worthwhile course to take. But, like anything of value, it's expensive. They need a minimum of 5 students, and at that level, the course is $1250. It drops to $1995 if you have 10 people. Might make an ideal cooperative venture for a mid-west museum to host it? Anyway, I'm not in a position to organize it, but if someone wanted to take the ball and coordinate it, there might be some interest. The company is called AMI Training Services (they're in Ohio), and the contact is Marc Starrett at 440/564-9128, email mstarrett@cyberdrive.net



California Zephyr Virtual Museum
amfmx@earthlink.net

I dunno, I would wont to see a syllabus before I plunked down my 1K. I had a previous life building airplanes (F-16's and F-111's) and wonder if relatively new planes and old trains face the same sorts of problems.<br> We have an entirely different take on disimillar materials. Aluminum is sacrificial to about anything, in fact, even zinc. We deal with much longer exposures, and most of our stuff is iron, steel, occasional stainless, and the brass/bronzes. <br>If you have been following the thread, you've already heard my rant on how steel is it's own worst enemy/disimilar material. We deal with much higher contamination levels, esp. the folks along the shore and in the northeast.<br>We took great pains in the plant to seal every fastener against corrosion, I bet RR manufacturers don't do this. <br>I would be willing to talk to this person, ask pertinant questions, and report back to the group if anybody wants. <p>Also, as an aside, it looks as if we are going to drop the axles out of our Rogers 0-4-0T tomorrow on the restored 1926 Whiting drop table. I knew I fixed that bugger for something! <p>Just saw some historic graffiti in the shop, according to this, the last hydro was done in there in May of 54. This will have to be updated soon. <p>Rudd, C of G Savannah Shops<br>



ruddlong@aol.com

I want to clarify the pricing that I was quoted by the training folks. The $1250 was for the group, not per person. It works out to $250 per person if 5 are in the group, $200 if you have 10 students. <p>No question that aluminum and steel behave somewhat different personalities, but many of the basics of corrosion still apply. It must have been nice to deal with new planes...we deal with very old and worn out planes (your F16s never saw the hours that our 43,000 hour/80,000 cycle Beeches see!), which are still used in heavy daily freight service. It just goes to show, if you take care of something diligently, it will last and perform well. Same with the rail equipment. When restoring it, use some of the new sealing techniques, use the new high-tech preservation compounds, provide reasonable environmental protect, and USE (read: exercise) your equipment, and like a DC3, it'll last years for our kids and grandkids to enjoy!<p>Alan<br>



amfmx@earthlink.net