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Anozira RR is a Garden O with 100%, GarGraves, 3 rails stainless steel track in Tucson, AZ.  Only stainless steel as anything else in O track will rust in a flash out doors.  Our biggest problem is dust and bird poo.  Understandably, we do not have lingering snow problems (though Tucson does receive snow at times, but its gone in less than a day).  So, as this thread began with concerns for colder latatudes, we can't offer much.  However, there are some other track maintenance concerns that are universal of which we might add some insight; ants and bird do-do.  In the summer we only run in the evening due to heat.  Water is a problem with O, so we irrigate in late afternoon which gives enough time for residual water to evaporate and usually gets rid of the dust on the rails and melts most of the bird poo.  Still, since the birds OWN the garden, their calling cards appear after any irrigation.  Dove poop is the most hazardous for our model trains as they leave a rather large pile on top of the rails.  Before any train running, we walk the track and knock off the obvious leaves, twigs, do-do, and prune any invasive plant intrusions.  THEN, as experience has taught us, we run a track cleaning car in front of an engine just to make sure.  The track cleaning cars have mid-ship, rotating Brillo pads.  This does a very good job. Ants, the little-bitty ones, use to like using the rails as their highway.  During the Fall, Winter, and Spring months we run trains day and night as the weather is GREAT!  But the ants liked using the rails as the rails are cool.  Mashed ants made for more rail and wheel cleanning.  In the summer the rails get too hot to leave one's fingers on them for more than a few seconds.  That's too hot for the ants also, so they use the track support, side rails (HDPE Flexible Roadbed --- <A href="http://www.btcomm.com/trains/primer/roadbed/ladder1.htm">http://www.btcomm.com/trains/primer/roadbed/ladder1.htm</A>.)  No problem as we aren't using the track anyway until evening and by sun down, the ants are in bed.  Daytime train running in cooler weather is an ant conflict until they begin hibernation.  We noticed that the ants avoided travel over track connections; why is that?  We spray WD-40 on all track connections to control corrosion of the pins.  So, we began spraying WD-40 on the all of the rails.  Now the ants use the support rails as their highway.  Perhaps they just realized that getting to rails was more work and the WD-40 (which is refined fish oil and additives) is not an ant deturrent after all.  Well okay, but they aren't using the rails any more regardless [:D].  The found side effect of WD-40 on the rails and ties is the aged appearance as dust sticks to the WD-40.  Now the rails and ties look more proto-typical, not all shinny.  Since the wheels only need good contact with rail top, running is not hampered.  After spraying WD-40, we just wipe the rail top with denatured alcohol a couple of times.  Then later after the oil has had time to creep up onto the rail tops, we wipe again. We haven't found anything to combat the birds' tendency to crap on the rails  -- and we never will; that's a given and we live with it.
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