cleaning tracks

[Anonymous]

what is the easiest way to clean the tracks if u cant make it out to a hobbie shop to get it the stuff they sell. is there houehold products or im i better going to the hobbie shop and buying the stuff

[Medina1128]

Try looking in the Health and Beauty Aids section at Wal-Mart and in the automotive section. Get some hairclipper oil and a small can of Mother's wheel polish. Polish your track with the Mother's. Then lightly coat the rail with a small amount of the clipper oil in a small section. Then run a train around the layout to spread the oil. Don't use so much oil that you soak the joint. A little goes a long way..

[MAbruce]

I use MAAS metal polish (usually avaiable at Home Depot). It's like waxing your car. Apply a very small dab with a clean cloth on a section of rail, and then wipe clean with a second clean cloth. You should see black streaks on your second cloth and the rails will shine like new. It also leaves a protective coating behind that will keep your rails clean longer. This residue is benign as it doesn’t have any ill effect on traction. I’m always concerned about using cleaners that leave a reside behind that reduces loco traction.

I've tried all the ways of cleaning track and this is by far the most effective.

[Anonymous]

Oh boy, here we go again... This type of thread always seems to generate some very strongly-held opinions...

I don't really have any, myself. in the past, I used a track-cleaning car (CMX Clean Machine) with solvents of some kind (e.g. nail polish remover)... So the tracks got very clean, but with nothing that "coated" them.

Going forward, once the new layout is done, I'm very tempted to try the MAAS or similar. I've heard lots of very positive reviews. I'm also tempted to try Goo Gone, since it's done amazing things for me in other applications - but I'm not sure if that leaves a residue or not...

I've not tried Wahl oil or similar, but simply can't see any way putting oil on the tracks is a good idea...

[dragonriversteel]

Flitz electrical contact cleaner,it leaves behind a protective coating .Also cleans copper,silver,gold and any other metal. You boys can use your Wahl clipper goop or MAAS goop,but I'll stay with Flitz,works alot better. Then again no need for a heated debate,use what you think works best.

Patrick

[Anonymous]

Electrical contact cleaner sounds like a pretty good idea to me. I may try the Flitz myself. Then I can come back with some good flaming for anyone who doesn't use MY way. [8D]

[MAbruce]

I thought that Flitz and MAAS were the same type of polish. Is there a difference?

[Anonymous]

nail polish remover does that work i thought it would be unsafe for the track because of some of the chemicals in it

[cmrproducts]

Well last week (Jan 9 – 13) I spent working on my layout. I started doing some plaster scenery again. After the plaster mess was dry I went around the sceniced areas with a clean cloth to remove any plaster that may have gotten on the railheads. Vacuumed up any dust and then on Sunday (Jan 15) hosted and operating session with 44 people in attendance.

Now I still have not cleaned my track with any track cleaning cars (which I no longer own) nor did I have to rewax any of the track on the layout due to the plaster scenery work. The last and only time I have waxed the track was back in July 2003!

Now would any of you try THAT with your conventional cleaning cars or methods with over 40 visitors/operators running your layout and equipment?

Metal Polishing the track is the answer PERIOD!

BOB H – Clarion, PA

[dragonriversteel]

Thank you Bob.....,I agree with you 100%. Regardless if its Flitz or MAAS {although I haven't used MAAS} this is the way to go.

Patrick

[claycts]

Has anyone tried NEVER-DULL/ This is the stuff we use to poli***he NICKEL SILVER on the Rolls and the Copper and Stainless on the Ferrari. I have read all these threads and am to the stage of doing something. The NEVER-DULL is a wadding and the can says that it leaves no deposites in the crevices of the metal. The stuff is made by Eagel-One.

[dacort]

I haven't had especially good luck with metal polish (though I haven't yet found/tried any MAAS or Flitz, so maybe I'm using the wrong type). It works for a while, but then the stalling and flickering headlights come back. I have my layout in a spare bedroom which is not very dirty, so I'm not sure how the track gets dirty so fast.

Recently I made a couple track cleaning cars of my own out of a couple old boxcars. I drilled holes in the bottom and made some masonite pads with nails glued to them that stick up through the holes in the boxcar floors. I've heard other people say this works, and it was certainly a cheap solution, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I have to say, it works pretty well. I still have to run the track cleaning cars around every couple of days, but that's easier than polishing all that rail by hand. The masonite pads are removable, so the boxcars can still be used as boxcars, and the pads can be cleaned with a light sanding.

[Anonymous]

I tried the Mother's polish once. Put it on very sparingly, and wiped the rails off afterward, to make sure there was no bad residue.

Two days later I got to clean the black deposits off the wheels of my Dash 8.

[cmrproducts]

Yes, the engine wheels will still needed cleaned for a while, but as running time on the layout increases the cleaning will get further and further apart.

Now your plastic wheels on the cars and for that matter the metal wheels will start to clean themselves off once the metal polish has been on there for a while.

What I have found (and this is over the past 20 years of a Club environment) is that the plastic car wheels are actually cleaning your track, to a point, just as the Masonite draggers do, but the car wheels can only hold so much dirt until they begin to redeposit it onto the tracks.

Now I was lucky on my layout as most of the cars were new out of the box and they did not have the dirty built up from years of running. I also had been replacing a number of trucks on older cars before I put them on the new layout. So I probably was not seeing the redepositing of the dirt on the rails as a number of you have so stated.

But I have not had to clean the engine wheels as much as I did before I used the metal polish. Now I really do not know the reasons why my basement environment would be any better than an upstairs bedroom but if the heating is recirculating hot air then it will deposit dust onto everything much faster than hot water baseboard heating.

BOB H – Clarion, PA

[Anonymous]

where can u find flitz or maas at i want to try it but dont know where it can be found

[cmrproducts]

I use Blue Magic (liquid - a lot more work then the paste) and Mother mag Wheel Polish. Both work fine.

BOB H - Clarion, PA

[MAbruce]

QUOTE: Originally posted by chrisdhaddo

where can u find flitz or maas at i want to try it but dont know where it can be found

Chris - I bought my tube at Home Depot a couple years ago, but I've noticed that this store no longer stocks it. Not sure if it's a temporary outage, or HD stopped carrying it. I'd also try Walmart or Target.

Or you can see them online at: http://www.maasinc.com/products_metalpolish.html

[rolleiman]

QUOTE: Originally posted by chrisdhaddo

where can u find flitz or maas at i want to try it but dont know where it can be found

If you have a murry's auto parts near you, try there.. They carry it (flitz) here at the ones in Michigan.. I went with the blue magic.. Works great and a lot less expensive. The key as I see it is the applicator. CMR suggests (I think) using a piece of homasote.. Wipe some of the polish onto the piece of homasote and begin rubbing the rails. The surface of the homasote will turn pitch black.. I then went an extra step and wiped it off with a clean chunk of homasote.. I don't know if the extra step is necassary or even wise but it did pick up any light deposits on the sides of the rail head.

See the thread here for the test I've been doing in the last couple weeks. To add to the text in the thread, as of last night, 10 seconds per tie.. Read the thread and you'll know what that means.

http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=54138

Good luck,
Jeff

[Anonymous]

I used never dull to polish brass in the Navy. It seemed to leave a weird film on the metal. I don't know how that would work for track...good film/bad film??

It polishes well so I would be interested in hearing if anyone has used it.

[cmrproducts]

I am afraid of using anything that leaves a film on the rails. Had that experience with the Wahl hair clipper oil. It worked but the build up on the car wheels was unbelievable!

Also Brasso leaves an oily film on the metal surface as does some Chrome polish.

You do not want anything but dry for the rails.

And I use old HO cork roadbed to apply the polish. I was having too many problems with the Homasote as it would deposit little bits of fuzz as it began to breakdown!

BOB H – Clarion, PA

[Anonymous]

try using (not to fine nor to coarse) sand paper on rails (it always works 4 me)

[cmrproducts]

matica242

How often do you have to use the sandpaper?

If it is more than once in 3 YEARS then YOU like to clean track. I on the other hand do not and that is why I changed over to metal polish. It ended the track cleaning!

Yes your method works and it does just what you expect but you HAVE to keep on doing it over and over. I have 2700 feet of track to do and cleaning takes several hours. So finding the metal polish method keeps me and my crew happy as they do not have to worry about stalling engines EVER!

BOB H - Clarion, PA

[Anonymous]

I do not know if it is a good idea but with my old HO trainset I cleaned the tracks with a pink eraser.

[cmrproducts]

With this cleaning track thing. We can go on and on about what everyone uses, as they all work! They have to unless you are reporting things that don’t work?

But here a few things to consider:

Do YOU really like to clean track?

If you have any size layout over a 4 x 8 with more than 25 feet of track and you have to clean the track every time you want to run trains, sort of takes all of the fun out of going down to the layout and just run some trains for a while, doesn’t it?

While using sandpaper and cleaning blocks, etc. work you still need to use them again and again.

And using chemicals (acetone, paint thinner, alcohol, etc.) is it really a good idea to use this stuff in a confined area (the train room)?

Although this is a decision you have to make (and now they say Teflon is not good for you), it makes me wonder how the exposure to our usual track cleaning products will affect us in the long run. Plus the use of MEK in liquid glues and paint solvents. And the vapors from the water base paints are not so innocent either! It will just take a few years to find these things out.

But getting back on topic; I don’t like to spend any more time having to clean track than anyone else does. When I found out how long the metal polish kept me from having to waste my fun time cleaning the rails just so I could run my trains it was a Godsend. I had serious doubts if I could afford all the necessary time I would have to spend cleaning the track (and I had all of the cleaning cars) and still spent about an hour cleaning the track (2700 feet of track) to get ready for an OPs.

As it is now it takes me a good 45 min to repin all of my cars to get ready for a Thursday nights OPs session (800 plus cars). Now if I had to spend another hour cleaning track (and this would be just the mainlines and passing sidings) I would pretty much have to start 3 days ahead of time, which really would cut into my modeling time. I know that I had to leave the industry spurs go as there were too many and then you had to move 800 cars around to get into each of the industry tracks. So in actual time cleaning a lot of it was spent moving cars than actual cleaning. It all adds up.

Now 3 years later I am still running the layout and still do not have problems with dirty track.

I just visited a layout over the weekend and the owner had a wood working shop in the next room beside the layout. His track had just been cleaned (mainline and passing sidings only) and as long as the mainline trains were running they worked fine. But as soon as you stopped and did any switching the stalling of engines started. Now OPs is all about switching cars NOT running on the Mainline! So this took a lot of the fun out of the OPs session. If it were me, I would have had found a way to keep the wood dust from settling on the layout a long time ago as the scenery and buildings were collecting this dust and it did take away from the looks of the layout!

So using metal polish (Blue Magic – Mothers Mag Wheel Polish) has stopped the constant cleaning of the rails and has allowed me to concentrate on the real reason I built the layout OPs!

BOB H – Clarion, PA

[Anonymous]

Wahl clipper oil should only be used to coat the rails prior to painting the track. It just allows the paint not to setup on the rails.