Looking for Brass Resources, Got one heck of a project ahead of me.

[Irbricksceo]

Hey there! Now that this site is back, I figured I'd throw this here too since I've not had much luck looking elsewhere and have gotten good advice here in the past.

So, a few months ago, I FINALLY found my grandfathers missing brass locomotives. Unlike most of the rest of his collection, these I have no intention of selling off, but they need a lot of work, and so I've kind of made a commitment to myself to pick one and start restoring it this spring once my leg heals up (and then onto the next one and so on). Does anybody have any good links on working with HO Brass? In particular:

-Cleaning Oxidation
-Dealing with Corrosion (the Climax in particular has BAD green corrosion, I hope it isn't a lost cause)
-Fixing the electrics (most don't run at all due to age)
-Lubrication (don't know if it is different for brass)
-Painting
-Adding Headlamp Holes (I ASSUME I can just drill the can open but if I'm wrong, I'd like to know)
-Repairing/Replacing damaged parts
-Converting to DCC (the big one, I don't actually have an HO layout anymore, had to switch to N for space reasons, so this isn't a huge deal but I figure prepping the models for DCC down the line would be best done while i'm in there, even if I setup temporary "jumpers" for now in place of actual decoders)

And I'm sure more questions will come as I work, so yeah, lot of info out there, just looking for good resources to get started. Thanks!

Pics of the locos for the curious: https://imgur.com/a/iggutAw

[Ken Huck]

Don't know if they can help, but here's a place I go for brass:

www.brasstrains.com
 
Hope they can help.

Ken

[Ken Huck]

Here's another page I got from another member of this forum quite a while back.
I couldn't find it earlier be cause of 'hard drive failure'.

http://www.allbrassbackshop.com/


HTH
Ken

[Irbricksceo]

I appreciate the links Ken, though, and maybe I'm just blind, but it seems the first is for buying models, and the second is for paying for their restoration? Useful links to be sure, but I'm looking to do the work myself. I find I'm quite handy these days after all, far more than I was as a kid when I as likely to permanently destroy a loco as I  was to get it back together again!

[Ken Huck]

Why'd you even ask to begin with ?

[Terry Toenges]

I Googled ho brass repair and some of those links might be what you need. You have to see which ones are helpful. Some of them are others that do repairs but some seem to be for the "do it yourself" people.
https://www.google.com/search?as_q=ho+brass+repair&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=&as_occt=any&safe=images&as_filetype=&tbs=#ip=1

[Irbricksceo]

Why'd you even ask to begin with ?

I'm sorry but I don't quite follow? I asked because I wanted to know, and figured that rather than comb through hundreds of search results and videos looking for the good ones, I'd ask and see if anybody here had resources they liked already on hand. I know in my other hobbies, and in my profession, it is an extremely common thing to ask for good places to learn about new skills and the like. Insiders are, after all, more likely to already know what is wheat, and what is chaff.