MTH Wheel Rot Hiawatha Project Fail

[@bradkorando]

Thanks for sharing your experience with the MTH RailKing Hiawatha. Like you, I bought one secondhand on an auction site and mine also has the zinc rot issue. I found your video very helpful to see how to start the disassembly process. I am in search of a suitable drive block to use as a replacement for the existing one. Please post another video if you ever replace the drive block. I think there will be a lot of interest since it seems that there are several locos popping up on the auction sites that are afflicted with the same problem. Regards, Brad

[@johnandrus3901]

Interesting. I've been fortunate enough not to have any zinc pest on my locomotives. I only have one MTH locomotive, a Rail King Ps-4 Pacific and it runs quite well. I have two Williams cars that have the zinc pest on just truck each car. They are a fairly common item on eBay, for only a few bucks. Good luck finding the wheels. It's too bad that MTH doesn't offer the wheels separately, which seems a bit unusual. An excellent video, as always.

[@wordenentertainment1997]

Great video. I literally just got one of these and it has the same issue. Turns out most of the rail king Hiawathas from the late 90s have this issue with zinc pest due to a bad metal batch from the factory. The tender shells for the Railking PRR torpedo also have zinc pest. I also tried looking up replacement wheels from MTH, but of course Out of Stock. I ultimately used the black wheels from a spare parts chassis for my Hiawatha and now it runs great, just looking a bit different. I do have a another spare chassis if you need one. Best wishes.

[@MatthewJoseph-td5qc]

Is that Milwalkee steam engine a Protosound 1 engine??

[@modeltrainsolutions7368]

Yes, it is a Proto 1 engine. Good news is I was able to run Milwaukee tender with another random Proto 1 locomotive.