Cleaning Lionel Aluminum Pass. Cars

[Algonquin]

I have a set of Lionel 2530 series aluminum passenger cars from the early fifties. These cars were previously stored in news paper. The surface of the cars appears dirty, most probably due to the news print. I would like to clean these cars. Does anyone know a safe method for cleaning the surfaces?

I seem to recall a CTT article or reader response some years back on this subject, but I have not been able to locate it.

I was thinking it would be OK to remove the plastic vestibles (I believe these are painted silver) and removing the extruded aluminum shells and washing them in warm water with a mild dish washing soap.

Does anyone have any opinions.

Thanks

Tim P.

[Anonymous]

Take off the plastic ends remove the car floors and the window strips, what you have left is solid aluminum that soap wont harm, use care around name plates as to not remove any lettering. On dirty cars you can use SOS bads to get the shine back. Rinse dry and they'll be like new!

[Algonquin]

Thanks Alex,

I had not heard about using SOS pads. I will le you know how they come out.

Tim P.

[Anonymous]

THANKS ALEX: WILL PASS ALONG INFO TO FRIEND,WE WERE HAVING A TALK ON HOW TO CLEAN HIS ALUM.,PASSENGER CARS==== HUB