Several questions to start. 1. What is the recommended procedure for refurbing old track that has light rust on it? 2. What does one use in a 293 steamer for smoke? Thanks for any and all information that you can share with this newbie.
For removing rust from track the green scotch brite pads work well. I also have a powered wire wheel brush to remove rust quickly. Never use steel wool! Just make sure you wear safety glasses! I have found that both Lionel smoke fluid and Big Puff Smoke fluid work fine in Flyer locomotives I am certain that other brands will work also.
Don't use anything so abrasive that it might remove the tin plating from the steel rails, especially on the railheads.
Bob Nelson
For really rusty track a brass wire wheel followed up with a scotch brite. Scotch brite for regular cleaning as stated before. A brite boy work too but moreexpensive than the scotch brite.
For the 293 the smoke fluid is pretty much universal and a matter of preference. If the engine has not been ran ffor a while, before applying power to the loco, fill the smoke chamber via the smoke tube in the smoke stack. If it has been sitting for a LONG time, you may need to fill it several times as the wick will be dry and you are re-saturating the wick. Just a few drops at a time because otherwise you're just letting it run out over the sides. Once filled, let it sit overnight then turn the enging over onto some paper towels to drain out the excess fluid overnight. Then power up. You will find if the wick is good as you use the engine the smoke will improve as the wick becomes totally saturated.
Jim
Thank you all for the great suggestions. I have alot of work ahead of me, but isn't that what it's all about.
“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.”
AZ-Flyer@American Flyer Cabinet-top Layout (5'x16'): http://az-flyer.blogspot.com/
When I took the track out after 40 years I spent countless hours cleaning the track just to get it to run. The conductivity of the track just isn't very good so I started to run feeder wires every of couple of feet and that helped.I thought my trains were a problem since I ran so many feeders.
At a train show I bought a box of helper track and some adapters and it was night & day between the 2 we I hooked it up. My flyers ran great on that section of track; little by little I converted over
It's a little expensive for a large layout but I found it was well worth it. Since you are new at it I wanted to mention that if you start getting frustrated. Dirty track can do that to a person!
Hope you have fun
Grant
It may help to understand the electrical behavior of track to examine the distinction between conductivity and conductance. Conductivity is a property of a material, such as the steel that tubular track is made of, and conductance is the proportionality between current and voltage in a circuit, such as that comprising transformer, wiring, track, and locomotive.
The conductivity of the rails depends on the material, almost entirely mild steel. The conductance depends on the conductivity, the shape, and the surface conditions of the rails. Neither the conductivity nor the shape of the rails changes significantly with age, at least until the rails are rusted well beyond anything we would consider using. So the conductance depends mainly on how the rails connect to each other and to the locomotive's wheels, through whatever corrosion they acquire on their surfaces at the points of contact. This means that the only parts of a rail whose cleanliness really matters electrically are the joints and the top of the railhead. If we can make clean, tight joints and clean railheads, old track should perform as well as new track. Unfortunately, this situation may be very hard to maintain if the rails have lost their tin plating, which protects the steel from rusting (but which itself does not contribute significantly to conductance).
Due to fear of lead, solder is now easily available that is essentially pure tin. It is possible to replate railheads with this stuff. But it's a lot of trouble to do a decent job; and I don't recommend it unless there's a special track piece that you really want to use.
Joints are a little easier. You can tighten track with circular railheads (unfortunately not postwar Flyer) by pinching the female end of the rail around something the size of the track pin (3/32 inch for O27, 7/64 inch for O31) or preferably a little smaller. Number drills are a good resource for this. The definitive rail joint is solder. With practice, you can just solder the rails directly together; but a trick to make it easier is to lay a short piece of bare copper wire across the joint on the rail flange and solder that into place. I remove the rail pins before soldering my joints. This makes it much easier to remove track for repair or renovation without having to upset the attached sections.
Even with perfect joints, track has resistance. It is very roughly equivalent to 16 AWG wire; so using anything smaller than about 14 AWG for feeders is not a great idea if your (rail) joints are in decent shape.
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