Lionel vs MTH: Greasing the Worm Gear

The worms need to be greased. Unlike the other gears in toy trains, the worm and worm wheel have sliding contact. A lack of lubricant will result in rapid wear. The manufactures may recommend a grease based on its safety around children.  If this is not an issue I would the grease be selected for it appropriateness for the application. I use Red n tacky on my worm gears, which are mostly metal. A different grease might be appropriate for plastic worm gears. My trains see light use and I try to relubricate them once a year.  

Not a bad idea to add grease to the gear boxes of any locomotive that has some run time on them,......if there’s no plug, and the loco is already out of warranty, you can access the worm gears by removing the shell, and opening the gear box cover. Take note of any gasket, and how it’s positioned to “trap” the bearings,....a drop of heavy oil on these bearings won’t hurt either.....while you’re in there, a tiny drop of oil on the motor shaft ends won’t hurt,.......service intervals will vary on how much you operate......

Pat

Hi David and Pat, thanks for the quick responses. How often do you normal grease the gears? every year, every 50 hours of use like MTH recommends?

I assume that MTH and Lionel applies grease to the worm gears of all their modern locomotives (since 1990). I have run some of my modern locomotives, off and on, for about 25 years, never applied grease to the worm gears, and never had a problem.

Based on your recommendations, when Covid is over, I might take some of my older modern locomotives to be serviced by an authorized MTH/Lionel repairman, including having the worm gears greased. I have taken the shells off of some of these modern locomotives to discover wires, etc were so tightly packed, it was difficult to put the shell back on without crimping the wires.

Arnold

I have the same worries Arnold. Lots of small wires just waiting for me to pinch. I still think it’s interesting that MTH spells out that the gearbox needs grease in the manual and the Lionel manual doesn’t mention it. Especially if grease is needed at regular intervals.

@Keith Crook 020419 posted:

Hi David and Pat, thanks for the quick responses. How often do you normal grease the gears? every year, every 50 hours of use like MTH recommends?

You can use the MTH interval as a guide, but your usage will dictate service intervals.....as a general rule of thumb, most do a major cleaning/ lube job once a year, with minor oiling of rods, rod and linkage maybe every 20-25 hours of use,....you’ll have to gauge that based on your amount of use.

Pat

I remove the trucks from the bottom every three or four years and clean things up.

Each engine in my collection generally sees track time only about five or six weeks each year. Because of the infrequent running, years ago I resorted to keeping a service log for each of my locomotives indicating when grease was last added to the wells, wheel bearings oiled and so on.  

I have found adding grease once every three years and oiling wheel bearings about once a year works well for my engines.

Curt

Once it greased it never needs to be done again unless it oozes out.   I would inspected new engines for grease as I've had some in the past with no grease.  Todays greases are so much better than what you find in Post war stuff.

Thank you for all the responses. I appreciate the insight you all provided. Just don’t want to destroy my engines as I’m slowly adding more legacy engines to my roster.

I find that even with today's excellent grease, the worm and internal gears do have to be periodically greased depending on run time.  The grease is eventually displaced due to running and the contact surfaces can become pretty dry.

Has to be done.   Use a quality grease.   Stuff they use from the factory is average.  But any grease is better than none.   You wouldn’t believe how many engines are shipped with dry or nearly dry gear boxes.