Track Cleaning on Club-Sized Layouts

[trainboyH16-44]

A large fleet of track cleaning cars, withon in almost every train, along with the occasional 'dirty track special'(10-20 track cleaning cars) should do the trick.
Also, wet a few of the cars with goo-gone, or some other track cleaner. Cars with rollers, I find work best in sets of 2 with the lead wetted.
Trainboy

[Anonymous]

Hi,
JohnT, the TRACK GUARD is only available through eBay. The current offering ends tomorrow this time +/-. so get on it!!
Thanks for the welcome.
Gus.[:)]

[Anonymous]

I'll tell ya, we have a 60x60 building at our club and it's absolutely crammed with 4-track mainline and several yards. Basically if the trains are running poorly or we're going to have an open house, we round up five or six of the guys, give everyone cotton cloths and rubbing alcohol, and spend about three or four hours working on the track.

Other things help though too...we prefer metal wheels and frown on anyone who wants to use plastic, and every single week the place is cleaned. We have a concrete floor which is swept and vacuumed, things are dusted (except for buildings and other scenery)...

Just keeping the place clean and running metal wheels cuts the need for track cleaning considerably. We probably only have to really spend an evening track-cleaning maybe a couple times a year if that, and with close to twenty members coming and going and running trains...that's not bad.

[cmrproducts]

One of the problems with cleaning track is you have to keep doing it on a regular basis!

What if you could do something to your track so that you would never have to clean it again! Sound interesting!

All it is going to cost you is a little time and a bottle or tube of silver metal polish. That’s it!

Sounds too easy doesn’t it! You don’t have to use a bunch of chemicals or spend the price of a new engine on a dumb cleaning car either. I through all my cleaning cars away, and I have a bunch of them. Just about every brand and type there was!

I have, as many others have, advised anyone asking about track CLEANING, that the problem is you are only cleaning the rails and not protecting them from getting dirty. So now you have to clean them again and again. DO YOU like to clean the track or run trains?

By using metal polish and any type will work (MAAS, Mothers Mag wheel polish, Blue Coral or any silverware polish, it don’t matter) you are first removing the dirt build up and/or oxidation. Then the wax/polish puts a protective coating on the rails that fills in the minute scratches. This eliminates the air from affecting the metal rails again and keeps the scratches from filling up with dirt. The dirt won’t stick to the rails just as waxing an automobile keeps the dirt from sticking to the finish.

The polish will not cause a build up of crud on the wheels as does Wal Hair Clipper oil does (and Yes I have used it and won’t any more)(I also have a big list of stuff I have tried over the years that didn’t work).

And I know there are many modelers that will never change as their methods work BUT if you are not happy with having to keep cleaning your track give the metal polish some thought. You will never go back.

And no it does not cause your engines to lose traction and it eliminates the sound engine drop out problems too!

I am using it on a layout with over 2600 feet of track on it so if it works on this large of a layout it will work on your layout! I haven’t cleaned the rails for over 2 years now and I plan on not cleaning until the engines won’t run any longer. So when this happens I will let everyone know.

To apply the polish, just put a little on a rag and wipe it on the rails. Do a few feet at a time and then using a clean rag go back and buff the rails to remove the cloudy coating on the rails (same as doing auto paint waxing). That is all there is to it.

Now clean your engine wheels and you are ready to go.

BOB H – Clarion, PA

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Isambard

QUOTE: Originally posted by dthurman
[

Where can MAAS or Mothers polish be found? Sounds promising!
[:)]

Wal-Mart, perhaps Ace Hardware. Check out the house cleaners section.
It's a two ounce paste in a tube for around $3.50, www.maasinc.com
Can be used on loco wheels too. There is a application procedure if you want it?
THANKS! MR January 2003.

[Anonymous]

Dave Harrison , one of the chief operatiors of the 1400 sq ft HO layout at the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry also uses the Tony clean machine along with 99% rubbing alcohol.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Isambard

QUOTE: Originally posted by dthurman

Using MAAS or Mothers polish, I every now and then will run a clean cloth over the railhead and it has eliminated the need for all those track cleaning cars, brightboys and cleaning fluids.

Just place some on a cloth, run it down the rail heads, let it start to dry then polish off. I almost will garantee (sp) you will be hardly cleaning the track anymore, besides the engines.

Where can MAAS or Mothers polish be found? Sounds promising!
[:)]

Sorry been gone all day went to a division NMRA meet and visited 3 other layouts. Just catching up on posts, I bought mine (Mothers) at a auto parts store, any mag or chrome polish should work. One note, all the layouts I visited today ran rather sporadic, I mentioned polish and none had heard of it. I can testify to it's prefromance. I got home, fired up the trains and all ran with no stalls or variations in speed. Also keeping the loco wheels clean is a must.

Locomotive3 was the person that claimed it was better tne Ronco Steak Knives and better then the Clapper [;)] I took his advise, and when the girlfreind finally allows visitors, I can rest assured my layout tour will be pretty much glitch free. Oh did I say I think it works great...

[robengland]

Many people swear by no cleaning, just Wahl's (spelling?) Clipper Oil. Much arguement over this but those who use it, including a friend of mine with a large layout, swear by it.

[JohnT14808]

Hey titocast...Welcome to the forum!!
[#welcome]

I'll have to look around for the HO Track Guard stuff. Maybe it's in the Walthers catalog.

[BRAKIE]

simply put we use Radio Shack's Channel Turner Cleaner every 6 months for cleaning track..The rest of the time we use a Athearn F7A dummy that has a bright boy attach to the bottom of the fuel tank..This unit is pushed by 2 Athearn GP7s..As far as yard tracks,well,if they get clean before operation its a miracle.
Our stagging yard gets clean once every six months..

[Anonymous]

Hi,
I'm new to this forum, but quite old in the hobby (40+ yrs...). I use a unique product (HO TRACK GUARD - check it out on eBay) that keep your track clean as you run your trains. I've been using it for years, and now that I'm operating DCC, performance has been great! It's mounted on a boxcar (actually several, so I know that there's always some doing the rounds on the layout) that once on the tracks is hard to see. Give it a try...I know it'll work for you.
Gus..

[Isambard]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dthurman

Using MAAS or Mothers polish, I every now and then will run a clean cloth over the railhead and it has eliminated the need for all those track cleaning cars, brightboys and cleaning fluids.

Just place some on a cloth, run it down the rail heads, let it start to dry then polish off. I almost will garantee (sp) you will be hardly cleaning the track anymore, besides the engines.

Where can MAAS or Mothers polish be found? Sounds promising!
[:)]

[cnw4001]

Our club has 1240 ' of mainline and several hundred feet of yards. Elbow grease with several members each taking a portion of the mainline. We've tried various track cleaning cars with little success.

The real problem lies in the fact that the car wheels are still dirty after a cleaning session and cleaning the huge fleet of cars verges on the unrealistic so things go well for a while and then the dirt returns.

We had analog Command Control and finally gave up on it switching back to plain
DC blocks due to the dirt issue. Have not tried DCC after the bad experience with
Command Control. Not likely to see DCC either.

Despite the huge size the club is very small in terms of membership so that keeps
down the chance of spending a lot of money on DCC.

Dale

[jimrice4449]

Beware of Rail Zip! It will help w/ conuctivity but at a considerable cost in traction.

[Curmudgeon]

Just to be ornery, I will tell you in 12 years outdoors and over 1400 feet of track and over 75 turnouts, we have never, ever cleaned the track.
Not once.
Never had any failure of the trains to run due to dirty track, bad joiners, broken feeders, corroded jumpers.
We have even run during 3 power outtages in that time (and two 5.5 or greater earthquakes).

And that's with aluminum rail, no less.

TOC

[JohnT14808]

We'll have to try that, David!!

[Anonymous]

Using MAAS or Mothers polish, I every now and then will run a clean cloth over the railhead and it has eliminated the need for all those track cleaning cars, brightboys and cleaning fluids.

Just place some on a cloth, run it down the rail heads, let it start to dry then polish off. I almost will garantee (sp) you will be hardly cleaning the track anymore, besides the engines.

[jrbernier]

We use a combination of the TTX CMX with lacquer thinner and 'sled cars' with a masonite bock under them. The masonite block has some drywall sanding screen glued to it. Sounds rough, but it really works good!

Jim

[dinwitty]

the club I was in we did a track cleaning train, an old basic ulrich car with tank filled with alcohol, it was upgraded with these rolling buffer cars for track cleaning.
it was ran down mains and passings before every run session.
We found these computer pads and soaked them in alcohol for manual cleaning.
I suggest RailZip on the tracks also.

[JohnT14808]

At the OMRS club layout, we employ several different types:
1) An eight or nine car freight train with 'dry' rubbing pads under the box cars.
2) Another train with two engine to push/pull super heavy scrubber cars ( really weighted down. )
3) Possibly a third train with one of those cleaning cars with the turning pad in the center of a flat car ( I forget the name of the manufacturer) with "Goop" cleaner squirted on the rolling pad and followed up by the train operator with a rag to wipe up any excess off the rails. Usually this is a "push" operation and the train operator swaps out engines after a short time, as you end up cleaning the locomotive wheels at the same time.
4) Then there is the old fashioned method of cleaning bricks and elbow gease, followed up with a quick wipe of the rails to remove grit excess.
5) For the yards and sidings, it's mostly done by hand using technique #4.
For us, it all depends on who powers up the layout on club nights. Most of us do run the freight train around for about 20 minutes on each main, just to get the dust and loose crud off prior to starting the ops session.

[Isambard]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cacole

At the Cochise & Western Model Railroad Club's 20x40 foot HO scale layout, we fought the dirty track devil for several years with every imaginable track cleaning car and product.

The best we have found is the CMX Clean Machine from Tony's Train Exchange filled with lacquer thinner followed by a Centerline track cleaning car running dry to mop up any residue.

Once every six months is all we do now, except for minor spot cleaning with Nevr-Dull Magic Wadding Polish or a Roco track cleaning block.

Nevr-Dull Magic Wadding Polish ? A name that one is not likely to forget easily! I assume it's an impregnated wadding of some sort. Where do you find it?

[cacole]

At the Cochise & Western Model Railroad Club's 20x40 foot HO scale layout, we fought the dirty track devil for several years with every imaginable track cleaning car and product.

The best we have found is the CMX Clean Machine from Tony's Train Exchange filled with lacquer thinner followed by a Centerline track cleaning car running dry to mop up any residue.

Once every six months is all we do now, except for minor spot cleaning with Nevr-Dull Magic Wadding Polish or a Roco track cleaning block.

[Isambard]

Our club is currently converting to DCC only and we recognize the need to improve our approach to track cleaning, which has been haphazard to date, if we're going to have reliable DCC running.

We have two main concentric mainline loops, each about 100 ft long, crossovers, a number of sidings and spurs and an eight track stub-ended staging yard off a wye.

We're interested in hearing how others with large layouts instill discipline and about methods and gadgets used to ensure clean track throughout the layout.

Thanks y'all!

[:)]