I just don't buy any item with any type of smell. If the seller won't come clean then the sale is off. If by chance I do get one it is immediately sold with warnings.
Dave
The mild dish detergent is one of the best.
the borax is great, also. When (if) if recrystallizes(white residue) you can brush or vacuum away.
The desiccant can be purchased at Lowes as a basement dry product. I place it in the appropriate sized "mixing can" (a plain paint can with a lid) and put objects wrapped in cotton material inside and seal the lid. Could be tough for trains, so the sealing container needs to be solved. Saved many cell phones this way. Turn them off immediately after the water incident.
I can understand people wanting to keep/clean an item that has nicotine or mold/mildew smell, but why would you even consider keeping a box that has a sewage smell or you feel that has been possibly immersed in raw sewage? Boxes are porous, you don't know what the box itself was immersed in and while I can only speak for myself, handling anything that I feel was immersed in any type of sewage would cause me to wash my hands immediately and I sure wouldn't put it in any type of closet or near anything else. I would immediately send it back, return policy or not. The seller has a responsibility for the merchandise he/she is selling. If I smell it then they have smelled it and if there is no mention of this in the description then that is not describing the product fully. I have seen many items on E-Bay with pictures of the box, usually I can tell if there has been moisture damage, yet there is no mention of it. I just move on no matter how much I want the item.
I use FUNKAWAY. It works on me!!!
Here's their site.
Mold and mildew odors are very hard to get rid of. We discovered after our house suffered mold damage that no amount of washing the clothes and other fabric items could remove the smell, but after they were thoroughly washed, allowing the items to bask and dry in the sunlight on a clear day did wonders for removing the smell. Some items needed several days of sunlight treatment. The trains themselves are not very porous, but their boxes and packing are, and so, they will be more difficult to rid of the smell. Fortunately, I have no experience in dealing with sewage odors...
Bill in FtL
I purchased a few items on this forum that had a very bad mildew smell. I put them in a bag with kitty litter for a week and the smell went away.
Ted S posted:You could try putting them in close proximity to an ion generator. Be aware that this could be a respiratory hazard, and that you should flush the room with a supply of fresh air before spending time in there yourself. I had pretty good success getting the smoke smell out of some used speakers and speaker grills with this method.
This method should work fine on paper, cardboard, foam, and even plastic. But it's also possible that a high concentration of anions (negative ions) could accelerate the oxidation of metals.
I could be mistaken, but I believe odor reducers like Febreeze use ionizing chemicals to bond with smoke particles, etc. causing them to precipitate out of the air. So that's a chemical approach instead of an electrical one I describe above. Good luck! Let us know what you try so others will benefit from what you learn.
Ted, I bought an Ozone generator many years ago and have used it numerous times on trains, cloth, boxes, paper etc. in very high concentrations and have not noted any degradation of metal surfaces. Not only that my basement tends to be a little damp and that is where I store it. If I look inside there is unpainted steel aluminum and copper none have any visible oxidation or corrosion so I don't think we have to worry about that. One caveat might be zink rot and I say this because I have stabilized zinc rot by filling the cracks with superglue. I think sealing off air and moisture contact with the boundary layers where the galvanic action is occurring seems to slow perhaps even stop the process. So filling those same cracks with such an aggressive oxidation agent as ozone may speed the process. Just not sure on that point ?????? I have not seen any visible degradation of sound zinc castings and most of the trains I have treated have at least some zinc in their construction. One thing is for certain ozone generators will get smells out of paper, cardboard, cloth, wood or any other porous materials like nothing else. Given time the ozone will penetrate any porous substance and smells such a mold, cigarette smoke, fire smoke etc. don't stand a chance. Let me add one more smell to the list, baby puke. My niece had a pillow she had washed several times and could not get the puke smell out of so just before she tossed it I offered to put it in my ozone closet. A week later the pillow smelled fresh as new. j
