I'm in HO and I swear by my CMX car. I think they also make them in N scale. The car is a heavy brass tank that can be filled with cleaning fluid. They recommend either isopropyl alcohol or lacquer thinner, with the preference to the thinner. I've tried both, and I agree that the lacquer thinner does a far better job. The car has a needle valve to adjust drip rate of the fluid on to a cloth pad, with rubs along the track.
I just did mine tonight, because I noticed some sluggish behavior which always says, "Clean me!" We're having some guests for dinner tomorrow night, and I wanted the trains to be running well anyway.
I have a layer of subways below my "conventional" layout. Cleaning track by hand would be awkward and time-consuming. This unit is far better.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I use John Allen inspired slider cars. a thin piece of 1/8' masonite with two nails epoxied to the smooth side inserted into holes drilled into the floor of a box car. I push them around my layout ahead of a locomotive before operating and then pull one in each train right behind the loco. I clean the masonite with a piece of fine sandpaper. They do create some drag so you would need a pair of locos sometimes to pull or push more than one of these cars around. I made several cars and made three pads for each of them. I model in N and I made a couple in HO also to run at my club.
Don - Do a search in the "Search Community" box for cleaning suggestions. You will find quite a few threads that address this question. I model N but do not have track cleaning cars yet, I use the eraser method, but have heard good things about the CMX clean machine.
Can anyone recommend the best system for cleaning of "N" gauge track. I would like to use a wagon of some description.
Thanks