After reading about the La Mesa Club successfully employing mineral spirits for cleaning their track I decided to follow suit last spring. I also lightly swiped the inside of the rails with a 4B graphite stick as recommended. Locomotives ran great.
Fired up my layout tonight after a couple month hiatus and happy to report that locomotive performance was fine with nary a stutter nor stumble. Most impressive considering the DCC switching layout shares a finished garage with the family automobile.
No more sticky turnout points as with the lacquer thinner. Don't know all the science or how much the 'gleaming' of the track back in 2012 figures in. Not sure if this is the holy grail, but after 36 years of model railroading I've never had it so good.
Regards, Peter
Good to know Peter, thank you! I've been eyeing a CMX car and the myriad opinions as to what to use them with. I think I have my answer now.
Mike
Our Oshawa club (Pine Ridge Railroaders) did ours with this system a year or more ago. Use odourless mineral spirits. Only problem is if a trouble spot develops, swiping the track with a finger always comes up black.
I still love my CMX car, and I use the more aggressive lacquer thinner rather than the gentler but less effective isopropyl alcohol. I bought the car early on because I was building tunnels for my subways, and removing all the access liftoffs would be pretty tedious, and would still leave me with places I couldn't reach.
After much experimentation, I'm very happy with pulling the car around all the mainline track, but for yards and short sidings it's a lot easier to just push the car back and forth over the siding a few times by hand.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.