Woodland Senics Roto Wheel Cleaner

[pennsyj1fan]

Has anyone used the Woodland Scenics Roto Wheel Cleaner for locos. I have tons of locos that have been in plastic tubs in the basement waiting for a layout to be built and I need a good way to clean them without using an abrasive cleaner such as the Kadee product with metal on metal, or brass as the cleaning part is made of.

[rrinker]

 Call me silly, or cheap, as the case may be, but some 90% Isoproply alcohol from the drug store or walmart and some handi-wipes or a heavy duty shop towels have always served me well. A piece of flex track and a power source are the only other items you need. Wet the towel, lay it across the rails, apply power, and hold the loco and move it back and forth over the towel. Slide the towel to the side to get a clean spot and repeat until the wheels are clean. For tender wheels or non-powered axles, a q-tip or better a foam swab (no cotton fibers that way) works. For my rolling stock I actually use a nylon brush (NOT WIRE BRUSH) in my Dremel.

 If the dirt's really stubborn - acetone works better than alcohol. Just don't drip it on plastic parts. We use acetone in a track cleaning car, and also on the exact same cleaning track for years with no damage to anything - no one's locos have melted, the cleaning track has not melted, and neither have the ties anywhere on the layout.

                      --Randy

 

[maxman]

pennsyj1fan

Has anyone used the Woodland Scenics Roto Wheel Cleaner for locos.

Back on July 1st of this year there was a thread started about someone's experiences with this product.  If you want to get at least one opinion, take a look at: http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/p/207641/2277728.aspx#2277728

[cudaken]

 I am with Randy on this one. Don't waste the money. I have doing it this way for 5 years now.

 Cuda Ken

[kenkal]

Hi PennsyJ1fan,

See the link to the thread I started on 7/1 as noted by maxman above.  I published an update  as well a few entries down that thread.

Since then:

I personally don't like it for cleaning car wheels.  It's a lot of wasted effort rolling a car back and forth, back and forth and the wheels, even though only lightly dirty to begin with, just don't seem much cleaner. Don't even bother with passenger car wheels unless you plan to remove them from the car first.

I bought it mainly for cleaning loco wheels.  Well, if you have steam forget it -  you can't move the loco very much w/o having to disconnect the tender.  If you have a large  wheel configuration, it doesn't get any easier even w/o disconnecting the tender. And if you have sound, you know how much of a pain it is to remove the tender from the steamer and good luck powering the loco with that tiny connector! 

As for diesels, unless you have really small switchers, you just won't be able to move the loco back and forth very much, which means very little of the cleaning pad is actually used before you need to replace it and they aren't exactly cheap.  With larger, 6 wheel trucks, it is even harder and like the steam locos, you can't move the loco back and forth very much and again wearing out a very small part of the cleaning pad.

So, basically I ended up throwing the unit on a shelf somewhere, to not be used again.  I went back to the paper towel and alcohol technique described above.  It is cheap, efficient and a roll of paper towels and pint of alcohol will last you a lifetime.

Woodland Scenics is a great company with great products and support.  Why they branched out to produce this product is beyond me.  But, all this is just my experience.  Yours may be different.

Ken

[Burlington Northern #24]

thank you Kenkal, I was going to buy this but I suppose I'd be better off getting some 90% Iso, I'm not sure how I'm going to clean my steamer's wheels quite yet, with the favored Paper towel and Iso. My diesels tend to more of the running anyhow. plus one could also clean their tracks with the clean side of the towel. 

2 birds one stone.

[Weatherboy12]

The roto wheel cleaner works great! It was a wise purchase. I think it works better than alcohol and it cleans all wheels at once so you can clean more locos in less time.

[cacole]

We bought one for use at our HO scale club.  We discovered that it works much better if you put some track cleaner fluid on the pads; otherwise it doesn't clean very well.  We use it only for diesel locomotive wheels.  It's pretty worthless for cleaning rolling stock wheels, even with cleaning fluid on the pads.

A piece of cloth or paper towel with a small amount of track cleaning fluid on it, stretched across the track, still works just as well and is preferred most of the time by club members.