Boxes swelling and coming apart

That's from humidity.  If you don't have a dehumidifier in your basement, invest in one.  I just turned mine on yesterday and I will run it until the snow starts to fly this fall.

Jim nailed it.  As a career residential contractor I can give witness that a very large portion of my work came from the two "M"s.

 

Moisture and movement.

 

These are the gremlins of any structure.

 

In a basement, in addition to leaks through foundation & floor cracks, slow plumbing leaks and outright bursting of pipes and tanks there is the floor.

 

There are two ways moisture travels through a basement floor.

 

Hydrostatic:  moisture which pushes up vertically from the soil below.

Capillary:  moisture which travels horizontally from the perimeter or open cracks and flows throughout the body of a concrete slab.

 

I would say another concern with affected cardboard would be mold especially in the presence of young/old/vulnerable individuals.

Store them in the attic, I've had boxes up there for years and they are still fine.  The basement is a bad place to store paper products.

It's also worth noting that in general any new construction you do be it finishing a basement or building a whole new house can also raise the humidity over the next year to two as building materials finish curing/wood dries out more.  In my new construction home the builder ran a industrial dehumidifier from the time the windows were in and the house wrap was on until they cleaned up and left and I've been running a much less impressive one any time the basement humidity is above 40% for the better part of they year.  Even in the dead of winter it ran most of the time, in the spring through fall it pretty much runs 24/7.

TRUE DAT!!!  Depends if you have more MOUSIES in the Attic or Basement!!!  Never met a mouse that didn't like to chew and pee on Lionel Boxes

I worry about moisture in the basement too. I have a dehumidifier going which drains into the sink. My attic is not insulated and gets very hot during the summer. Is it safe to store trains up there? I don't think it gets hot enough to melt anything.

When I received my Blue Comet passenger cars in "brick" and crisp boxes, some of the glue joints were starting to come unglued as I was unpacking them for inspection.  Easy to fix with a little Elmer's glue.  May be there was humidity coming from China, but I got them after Christmas.

 

A humidifier in the basement is a must if you don't have HVAC.

 

It certainly gets hot enough to melt/distort F-3 shells, etc...and cold enuf to crumble castings on coal loaders, searchlight/depressed cast Postwar Cars.  And I wouldn't be putting my 400E up there either.  ALL TRAINS SHOULD BE TEMPERATURE-CONTROLLED!!!  I have seen ALL the HORROR stories at the Auction Houses...warped castings, warped plastic shells, mildewed Alco roofs, spotted Madison Roofs, pitted finishes, 80-year-old tinplate with paint textured from the newspapers in which they are wrapped...it doesn't take a Rocket Scientist to surmise where they were stored.  Show me trains stored in a garage corner or attic, and I will show you trains not worth a second look!!!

Too much humidity.

I was experiencing this problem, and some rusting on switches.

I check the humidity.

78%!!!

ARGH!!

Bought a dehumidifier, hooked it to a pump and drain into the basement toilet.

After GALLONS of water taken out of the train room air, the humidity settled in at 48%, which appears to be ideal.

No more problems with cardboard or rust since.

Will plumb it in permanently when the train room enters the "finishing phase".

Residential humidity shoulde be maintained in the 35% to 55% range.

 

Attic heat really not a good thing.  Anything stored in a non insulated/ non HVAC attic I consider expendable.

Note that anything from China is packed into 40 ft steel containers, floats in pure salt air, and is baked by the sun for at least 2 weeks. most containers seal pretty well but others not so much.......

I don't recommend putting trains in the attic, but I've never had it bother the boxes.  Of course, I have three large vent fans that keep the attic to around 120 maximum on the hottest days.  I still maintain it's a lot better than storing them in a basement, unless you have effective dehumidification.

Seems a more than fair share of Tinplate Traditions I buy used, the boxes either come unglued or are about too. What do you guys use to test humidity? Think I'm buying a second dehumidifier this year!

You can buy many simple "weather station" modules that hang on the wall that have humidity measurement capability.