Cleaning wheels

[Anonymous]

Could somebody give me a good detailed description of a way to clean engine wheels, please?

[Anonymous]

.One of the simplest ways to clean loco wheels is to lay a piece of paper towel on the tracks
and dribble a few drops of Isopropyl rubbing alcohol on the towel.

Then put one truck of the loco on the paper towel over the track and the other truck on
the uncovered track for power.

Throttle up(holding the loco back) and you will see two strips of black dirt on the towel.
When done, reverse the procedure.

Other folks, including myself turn the loco over, run power clips from the track to the
electrical wiper/wheel, throttle up spinning the wheels and apply with your favorite cleaner.
Mine is MAAS cleaner metal /polisher two oz paste in a tube.

[jimrice4449]

I've got a quite dusty environment for my RR so dirty wheels are a recurrent problem. One solution that works well for me was to take a scrap piece of 1X4 about a foot long and attach .22 calibre bronze bore cleaning brushes to it spaced so that the wheels of my Alco switchers and GP-9s fit on them. I then attached wires to them that were in turn connected to brass plates notched to fit over the rails (be sure the two plates don't touch each other). Finally I attached a KaDee cplr hight guage to hold the engine in place. Now it's a simple matter to put the cleaner on the track, the engine on the cleaner and crank up the power. I go off and do something else for a couple of minutes and when I come back, viola!, clean wheels. It would make it a little simpler to build to solder aligator clip equiped wires to the two rows of brushes but at the cost of super-simple operation.

[Anonymous]

Okay, I did it the old "alcohol on paper towel" way and it worked brilliantly! Thanks alot jimrice4449 and locomotive3 for helping me! :D

[Anonymous]

Back to basics: cleaning wheels by Marty McGuirk

[scole100]

Micro Mark has a locomotive wheel cleaning track in thier catalog. It is a track with a velcro pad across a modified rail section. You put the cleaning pad on the velcro and the loco on the track hold it over the cleaning pad and let the wheels spin themselves clean. It does a great job. It is similar to the paper towel method mentioned above, but more durable.

[Blind Bruce]

What about rolling stock wheels, they crud up a lot after a while?
BB

[aluesch]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Captain Punjab

Could somebody give me a good detailed description of a way to clean engine wheels, please?

You could use the LUX wheel cleaning machine. It cleans the wheels while you operate your trains and it cleans all wheels on all rolling stock, not just the loco's driving wheels.
You can check it out here: http://www.mrsonline.net/html/wheel_cleaner.html

Regards,
Art

[twhite]

I use the Micro-Mark wheel cleaning solution--it's one of the best I've found. Since I have a lot of brass steam, with pickup from both loco and tender wheels, I just upend the units in a cradle, apply power to the drivers and clean them with a Q-tip dipped in the Micro-Mark solution. Shines them up all nice and bright. I've also installed Tomar Industries track-wipers on most of my brass--you can hardly see them but they improve the running qualities of the locomotives by about 80%, and you end up not having to clean the wheels quite as often.
Tom [^]

[tstage]

BB,

If you haven't done so already, which your plastic rolling stock wheels over to metal ones. (E.g. Proto 2000, Intermountain, or Kadee) They will perform and stay cleaner longer, as well as do the same for your layout track.

Tom

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by tstage

BB,

If you haven't done so already, which your plastic rolling stock wheels over to metal ones.

Tom

Caution: Be very-very careful. Axle lengths vary in length.
P2K 1.008", IM 1.013", KD 1.018" and the list goes on & on & on.
Replacements are a hit or miss since truck manufacturers are not consistant.