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I have found that using solvents and paint thinners sparingly have worked wonders, and last a long time for both wheels and track. If you are leary of using these materials, rubbing alcohol or other commercial track cleaners will work fine as well, but the solvents seem to keep everything cleaner longer. <br />As far as technique, I have attached two 6 inch long by 1/4 inch wide strips of metal on top of the rails near my loco servicing area. These will serve to provide power to my engines during the cleaning procedure and keeps the wheel treads off the rail while they spin. For the other set of trucks, a small piece of old cotton fabric lightly soaked with cleaning material is placed on the rail and held with your fingers. I place the engine with one set of trucks on top of the metal and the other on the cotton and start to run. In seconds ALL of the grime is removed from the truck. Turn the engine around and do the same for the other truck. With this set up on my layout, I find it very easy to keep my engines clean. At the first sign of any balkiness, directly to the cleaners they go. <br />For the track, I have found using a pliable 1.5 inch wide paint scraper wrapped in the cloth and slight soaked in the cleaning material to be an easy and very effective tool for cleaning. Just wrap the cloth around the blade once, hold it very snug, lightly soak the cloth with cleaning material and just simply run it over all the rails with slight pressure. You'll have to replace the cloth or move it around becuase you will be amazed at how dirty even clean track is. I work the trunouts first and then it is a simple matter of running all over the remaing rails in very quck fashion. Good luck!
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