After painting and ballasting my track, I'm now dealing with dead spots that weren't there before. Most are at switches. What is the best way to clean everything for improved performance?
Modeling the B&M Railroad during the transition era in Lowell, MA
I'm betting you are going to get a lot of varied opinions about the best way. I use a track cleaning eraser. Walthers has these two:
Walthers - Bright Boy Abrasive Track Cleaner - Standard Grit - 949-521
Walthers - Cratex Abrasive Block Extra Fine - 3 x 1 x 1/4" 7.6 x 2.5 x .6cm - 949-522
I used the Bright Boy for years but I recently discovered the second one because it seems a bit less abrasive. Assuming you used diluted white glue for your ballast, either should do the job.
There will be those who tell you not to use abrasive track erasers because they cause microscopic scratches in the railheads which will gather dirt. I'll allow them to make that argument and offer alternatives.
Several possible ways to do this, but that's because there are several possible new problems that you have.
If the joiners are now filled with glue or paint, and no longer providing good contact, you've lost connectivity between lengths of track elements, not least of which would be turnouts;
If it's the switch, at the points, maybe contaminants are preventing good contact at the under-throwbar contacts, or on-top-of-throwbar contacts. Or, if the points themselves are meant to provide continuity to the frog, contamination is preventing that. No contact between the inside face of the points and their mate stock rails;
Improperly suspended/supported turnouts, especially if their joiners are left loos/unsoldered. In an effort to keep them pesky turnouts free for removal if they develop problems, we trade another by leaving them free and maybe not well supported by ballast. They dip and sag, or roll, and the joiners lose contact.
To clean, simply wet a painter's cloth remnant wrapped around your index finger and wipe several times over a defined length of rail head. Do this until you're getting almost nothing turning up on the rag. Move on to another spot. Between the points and stock rail, run the rag carefully from the frog end toward the points, not the other way around...for what should be obvious reasons. Repeatedly.
For dried paint, scrap the rails carefully with scraps of scale stripwood/lumber. With a clean-cut and square edge, it will work well. Ragged broken ends won't.
I still use 600 grit paper wet/dry with good results. Sparingly. I also coat my rail stops with kerosene. It can be purchased in 3/4 qt bottles at the camping equipment section where it is sold for wick camping lanterns. When I say coat, I mean wipe with a dampened cloth. Or, I control the drip rate strictly on my CMX brass cleaner car and run that.
Rubbing alcohol is my go-to option.
Right after brush painting the rails rail brown, I wiped the rail heads with a bit of cloth moistened in I forget what, paint thinner or alcohol. I don't use MEK or lacquer thinner on flextrack lest it dissolve the plastic "spikes" molded into the tie strip that hold the rails in place.
Getting dried white glue off the railheads is harder. I am not aware of any solvent that will cut dried white glue. Scraping with an Xacto knife works, Brightboy works.
If the white glue has gotten into unsoldered rail joiners giving dead pieces of flex track I install more jumpers from my power bus. Turnouts often rely on electrical contact between the points and the stock rails to power the frog. I don't consider the points as a reliable electrical connection. The Tortoise switch machines have auxiliary contacts that can be easily wired to apply juice to the frog.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
I spent some time last evening and the problem seemed to be that the contact points on the switches got contaminated by paint, glue, and ballast. I spent some time on each switch last night cleaning the contact points of switches and the sides of the rails. Everything seemed to run smoother this morning.
Rob Spangler informed me he drags a utility blad backward across the rails after the paint has dried. I found it worked great for me.
As for wiping the rails while the paint is wet, it seems the cloth with the solvent could wrap around the tops of the rail when pressed down and take off more than desired - the sides of real rails remain rusty/weathered.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
I've always used Pollyscale paint for brush-painting the rails, and it dries-to-the-touch quite quickly. It's not, however, fully cured, but it's dry enough that the rail tops can be wiped clean using a soft cloth over your fingertips, without removing paint from the sides of the rails.
As for dried glue, after ballast work, I use a mildly abrasive block, meant for cleaning electrical contact points. It removes the dried diluted glue and leaves no discernible scratches on the top of the rails.
After applying and "grooming" ballast, I place a little LaBelle oil on each of the ties over which a turnout's points move, then after flicking them back and forth a couple of times, position the points in mid-throw. If your turnouts are sprung, use some strip styrene to block them in mid-throw position.You can then wet the loose ballast and apply the diluted white glue, without fear of cementing the points in place.
I usually work in 15'or 20' segments when ballasting main lines, and 10' segments when there are multiple turnouts.I find both painting the rails and ballasting track to be two of the most relaxing jobs in model railroading and also the two which give the model railroader the biggest bang for for his (or her) buck.
I've never had a problem with glue getting into rail joiners, either, as all of my track (other than that at the ends of bridges) is soldered together.The unsoldered joiners are to permit removal of bridges to allow scenery work or removal for repairs.
Wayne
dstarr If the white glue has gotten into unsoldered rail joiners giving dead pieces of flex track I install more jumpers from my power bus. Turnouts often rely on electrical contact between the points and the stock rails to power the frog. I don't consider the points as a reliable electrical connection. The Tortoise switch machines have auxiliary contacts that can be easily wired to apply juice to the frog.
I have gotten most areas cleaned and running smooth. I'm having a few problematic areas in my yard where I have several switches in a row. I am at the point where I'm going to install a few more jumpers to the power bus.
WilmJunc ... I'm having a few problematic areas in my yard where I have several switches in a row. I am at the point where I'm going to install a few more jumpers to the power bus.
... I'm having a few problematic areas in my yard where I have several switches in a row. I am at the point where I'm going to install a few more jumpers to the power bus.
This is where a meter is important. It could be bad connectivity and/feed, or it might just be dirt/corrosion. Sometimes just the weight of a locomotive will cause loss of connectivity at joiners. Yards, where so many turnouts are found, need careful thought, and as you say, maybe several more feeders/jumpers where you had thought you'd be safe. Happens to me all the time.
On my layout test segment, I tried somthing similar to what Dr.Wayne suggested.
I airbrushed the rails, and just before the paint was cured, but dry to the touch, I cleaned the rail heads with paint thinner in a white cloth.
Commercial track cleaners, like Peco, do not work well at removing paint from rails.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
That's why I paint rail with a brush, after track installation and several months of testing. Once weathered, I can't really tell the difference between hand painted and airbrush painted track. Not to my 50 year old eyes anyway. But the brush allows me to have better control over what gets covered with paint.
Simon
What voltage across the track should I be getting with DCC
snjroyThat's why I paint rail with a brush.
Up until the layout test segment, I painted every bit of rail I installed with a brush.
The layout test segment was all about experimentation, so I airbrushed the rails. Cosmetically, it all looked the same. The advantage was in ease of application and speediness.
I will still be brush painting my ties one at a time.
WilmJunc What voltage across the track should I be getting with DCC
It depends on your command stations system, which is also dependent on scale. While unclean track may cause poor voltage, this question is likely to go down the electrical troubleshooting rabbit hole.
As such, Steve Otte will let you start a new thread in the electrical forum, for free
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Lastspikemike Try methanol. Woodland Scenics says methanol should be used to soften and remove their Foam Tack Glue once it has hardened. I use water with maybe a little detergent (a wetting agent) to clean up or thin non hardened white glue but intend to switch to methanol on the basis of this information.
Try methanol.
Woodland Scenics says methanol should be used to soften and remove their Foam Tack Glue once it has hardened.
I use water with maybe a little detergent (a wetting agent) to clean up or thin non hardened white glue but intend to switch to methanol on the basis of this information.
Denatured alcohol is not methanol. By the way, denatured alcohol works very well to soften most white glues and even matter medium as well as cleaning dirt and adhesives off rails.
Rich
Alton Junction
To my knowledge, denatured alcohol in the United States has not contained the unnecessary human poison methanol for some time. 'Denatured alcohol' is ethyl alcohol (ethanol) either with a 'bitterant' to make it intolerable to drink or an unpalatable but non-distillable adulterant like the alkane 'hexane'.
Using the track-cleaning erasers as your first cleaning step is fine. Just don't stop there.
The scratches not only retain dirt, they provide the kind of sharp uneven contact that would lead to micro-arc pitting 'and all that that implies'.
The moral is that if you sand a little longer with finer grit, polish (and, I advise, burnish) afterward, you shouldn't have those glorified Chore Girl gouges for very long...
That doesn't need to be the elaborate cha-no-yu of religious track gleaming -- but it does involve enough sanding or lapping with finer grits that the 'washer trick' or equivalent leaves a hardened and wibble-free railhead contact surface.
I will put my usual plug for 3M lapping film on relatively soft laps in at this point. That stuff goes down to the equivalent of 30,000 grit if you need something that fine...
I think the best is to keep the track tapped so it does not get too much glue/or what ever on the track in the first place-
Better known as preplanning. JMO
Overmod ... I will put my usual plug for 3M lapping film on relatively soft laps in at this point. That stuff goes down to the equivalent of 30,000 grit if you need something that fine...
...
Jeweller's rouge or cerium oxide followed by a pitch rub. A good long rub. (Think mirror-blank finishing for use in a reflecting telescope.) Shouldn't take more than a couple weeks of ten hour days. And arthritic shoulders when it's over.
WilmJuncAfter painting and ballasting my track,
woodoneI think the best is to keep the track tapped so it does not get too much glue/or what ever on the track in the first place- Better known as preplanning.
It seems the OP is inquiring about cleanup of the rail-tops once the scenic detailing of the roadbed is finished.
Masking tape over painted ties and ballast would be a disaster!
Regards, Ed
gmpullmanIt seems the OP is inquiring about cleanup of the rail-tops once the scenic detailing of the roadbed is finished.
Yeah, and I can't figure why there'd be glue on the top of the rails, unless it was applied with a sprayer. As long as the ballast and surrounding scenic material is appropriately pre-wetted with "wet" water (a few drops of dish detergent added), the diluted glued will be quickly drawn into the ballast and any surrounding scenic material...I don't ever recall a build-up of glue on the rails, although they do lose their normal shine, which will need to be restored.While I use a slightly abrasive block of material used for cleaning electrical contact points, you could just as well use the blade from a utility knife, dragging it over the rails, as it's long enough to clean both rails in the same pass.
As for the glue in rail joiners, the easiest cure is to scrape off some paint from the side of the rails near the joints, then solder jumper wires from one rail to the next. Once they're all in place, and the trains are running again, use some appropriately-coloured paint and a suitable brush to cover-up the wire and soldered places....casual observers won't likely even notice the repairs. Depending on how much track you have, it could take some time to accomplish this, but it's still better than having to rip-up ballasted track, then re-lay and re-ballast it.
EDIT: I should have mentioned that the main "secret" should be that you don't have track without reliable electrical continuity. Ballasting and track-painting procedures are pretty basic, as is the cleaning process. Neglecting to ensure reliable power through the rails has created more work, as it would have been quite simple to first solder the rail joints together or install a bus wire, with connections to each individual piece of rail. In other words, the cart was placed before the horse. Ballasting usually isn't done until the the track is fully tested for good operation.
I think people should get used to using pipettes, emptied glue bottles with those twist-open or pull-open nozzles, or something other than a sprayer anywhere around tracks. If one covers nearby rails with tape, okay, go ahead, and then remove the tape, but you'll still have some adhesive residue here and there, a thin invisible film, on the rails after removing the tape.
And do solder most joints if not only half of them. Solder feeder wires to the soldered lengths so that power runs reliably along the entire soldered length. Liquid glues, applied or accidentally so, can't penetrate the solder.
Just do it.
I finally pulled out my multi-meter to check track voltage through out my layout and it should have been the first thing I did. I set the meter on the 50 VAC setting and was getting a consistent +/- 15 V in most locations. If I was getting good voltage but had a dead spot, it was either a dirty track issue or ballast stuck to the inside of the rail and must have been interfering with the wheel flanges.
If I was getting no voltage, it was typically a dirty contact point on a switch. The multimeter really helped in knowing what to look for.
I'll add something that helped just real recently, as I ballasted a lot of track and switches this week. I took a hack saw blade, cut about a 2 1/4 inch piece out of it, and use it to clean the grit out of the flangeways in the frogs and guargrails on the switches. I lay it longways as if it's a file with it's teeth along the edge.
You can break the sawblade to size by pitting it in a vice and bend it back and forth closely to the jaws until it breaks. Then true up the ends so they're straight.
Nifty little tool, it works great. A gentle touch I do advise. Dan
i also use a multimeter, especially for detecting dead or low voltage spots through switches and sidings. Bright Boy or 400 grit sand paper usually works best on the dead spots, and also a jewlers file to clean the switch points, when all else fails i add a solered jumper to the section of rail that lacks the correct voltage.
I have all hand and spray painted rail and use Arizona Mineral Rock ballest applied with a garderner's hand seeder, the ballest is secured in place with diluted white glue using a pipette, afterwards i use rubbing alcohol to clean the rails after applying the wet ballest. Every 4-6 months I run my CSX filled with Aero Track cleaner, i have a semi finished basement with heat and an overhead drop ceiling, tile floor, and painted masory walls. My worst months for stall spots are in the summertime, although i run a de-humidfier the track still requires a close maintenence check almost every day.
Nothing like running 6 axel engines with duel capacitors. Bayway Terminal NJ