cleaning corrosion

[Anonymous]

I am new at this whole railroading thing and i am quickly learning. I kept my train in the garage and now the wheels are brown. Is there a way to remove the rust, without damaging the rest. Also there is a bent piece of mettal that comes off the wheels on the inside that connects to the motor (I can't describe it better), thoes are rusty too.

[cacole]

What scale are you talking about? Lionel? HO? The thingies on the inside of the wheels that pick up current are called "contacts." They should be bronze. How to clean this crud off is going to depend on the answer about scale.

[Anonymous]

My train is HO and the contacts are something silver, not bronze.

[Anonymous]

I've heard good things about fibreglass pencils for cleaning corrosion from sensitive parts like these - the pencil is basically similar to one of the "propelling" type (where you press the top to extend the lead), but with a stick of fibreglass instead of graphite. One thing to watch out for - wear gloves, as fibreglass splinters are very sharp, painful, and tricky to see to remove!

An alternative would be a small wire brush in a Dremel or similar tool - run it as slowly as possible to avoid overheating and damaging any parts of the loco - also keep it well clear of plastic details as it'll shred them in seconds! I've used this technique for a while now and it seems effective enough, just watch out for melted bearings if you run the tool too fast!

Hope this helps!

[cacole]

If you can get the locomotive to run, put some rubbing alcohol on the edge of a paper towel, hold the paper towel over the track, and let the locomotive's wheels run up onto the paper towel. The locomotive will stall, but you can push it backwards off of the towel and it will re-start. Keep letting the locomotive run onto the towel and spin its wheels until they are clean. Then turn the locomotive around and do the other set of wheels. For the contacts on the inside of the wheels, just touch the inside of the wheels with a Q-tip soaked in light machine oil, but very sparingly.