Cleaning Plastic car bodies.

[Anonymous]

What's your best trick for cleaning/shining your plastic cars and shells,etc?

[ben10ben]

Warm, soapy water and an old, soft toothbrush followed by Pledge. Works every time for me.

Just be careful around decals and stamped lettering.

[Anonymous]

Use Johnson's Baby Shampoo

[3railguy]

I like to use Dawn dish detergent because it doesn't leave a film. I wash it with a soft dish mop and a soft toothhbrush in crevices. Be careful around decals. You can get most of the water off by dabbing it with a di***owel and let the rest air dry. Armorall or Pledge are good finish protectors.

[brianel027]

As a general rule, the above methods work fine for most modern production cars, beyond 1970 when MPC owned Lionel. I've never had any problems with post MPC era cars as far as cleaning goes. For older postwar cars, I'd consult a postwar info source first and clean carefully. The cheaper heatstamped cars and decaled items do definely warrant some caution. I have found the Lemon Pledge works good for older postwar cars. There are also specific cleaners advertised in the train mags.

Always be careful with lettering. As mentioned above, the soft toothbrush works well for cast in details and roof walks on box cars, but don't scrub lettering too hard. Remeber, Lionel was cost-cutting by the mid-1950's and utilizing water based or cheaper paints was one area to save money. I have on occasion had lettering start to come off on a cheaper post war box car, like the 9-inch off-white shorty Frisco box car... no big deal to me because I'm not opposed to repaints. But it's also very nice to NOT do a repaint if you weren't planning on it and if the car wasn't a beater or junker to start with.

From personal experience, I'd also be cautious with some of the early K-Line cars that were painted, like the Classic's series. The paint on the Alaska box car comes off easily as does the paint on the Santa Fe war bonnet S-2 shell. Armor All can also remove some paint on early painted K-Line cars... again, I say this from personal experience. Not enough to ruin the car, but enough so that you will be shocked when you see the cloth and you will worry you are going to ruin the car. On the other hand, the MTH cars - you can't even get the paint off by soaking in brake fluid, so no worries with those.

Also bear in mind that some of the older cars will never look as good as they did at one time simply for the fact that paints were as good then as they are now, so there is some inevitable fading on some cars. On cars that were molded plastic color, if there are digs and scratches, there's not much you can do but get the dirt out of these. But most do look much better with a nice cleaning. On the post war cars, don't forget the trucks and wheels... getting those clean and lubed not only helps with appearance, but really helps with operation and overall running.