I made my own from an old AHM boxcar and a pair of brass flywheels for a roller. It works pretty well and cost me $10 for all the parts.
S&S
Modeling the Pennsy and loving it!
I have subway tunnels, so I always planned on having a CMX car. It really does the job. I use it with lacquer thinner. I do keep a window open when I run it, but I set the needle valve for a low flow rate and don't really get much of an odor. I clean my track every 3-4 months.
Subway tunnels are restrictive, so I use my powered subway cars to haul around the CMX machine. It's very tunnel-friendly, actually smaller than the subway cars so there's no clearance problem. The car is very heavy. It comes with metal wheels and Kadee couplers (HO) and I've never had a problem with derailments. Between the weight and the cleaning pad, I need two powered subway cars to drag it around.
This is not designed to be run around all the time disguised as a regular freight car.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I "gleamed" my HO track. I then added a CMX car, using it every 2-3 months, with denatured alcohol (I believe many prefer lacquer thinner). I added a "John Allen" masonite pad car I converted (ala a YouTube video included in the attached older thread) from an Athearn BB box car kit. I run the John Allen car routinely in a train going about and occasionally push/pull it to cover all the trackage.
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/221146.aspx
I can tell you the John Allen car picks up lots of dust / dirt, and discovered just lately that I need to clean the pad occasionally or I'm just repositioning dirt. Folks use sand paper for that (getting it reasonably clean).
Oh, and when I run the CMX and John Allen car together the drag is significant, so I use a 2 loco consist to pull it.
I also have metal wheelsets on my freight cars, to minimize wheel accumulation of dirt I have not secured by cleaning. And I clean my loco driven wheels by spinning over an alcohol wet rag.
I think it all works together: gleaming helps track, two types of track cleaning car (wet and pad, pad run routinely), wheel considerations, etc.
I'd say if costs are important (the CMX car runs about $130 I recall), build a John Allen car and supplement that by wiping the rail occasionally with an alcohol wet rag. And I'd add gleaming as a cheap assist to the system, costing pennies but some time.
Paul
Modeling HO with a transition era UP bent
You should check Centerline to see if they now have an HOn3 trackcleaning car.
I have two N scale Centerline cars that I converted to HOn3 by swapping out trucks and modifying the couplers to 714s. The older one is kind of wide-bodied, but when I went to buy a second one, it was discontinued in favor of a narrower version. It's still usuable, though.
What I do with mine is use one wet and the other behind it dry, to pick up what the first leaves behind. I also have two standard gauge HO Centerlines and do the same thing with them. They can also be used with both wet for really bad build-ups, but not much need for that really. I put the loco in front in both cases.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Jack308gtsi,
N-scale, H0-scale, O-scale and:
The thought occurs to me that HOn3 trucks could be put under a CMX car but I'm not certain it will fit. CMX IS the best I have found in HO at least.
Is your layout point to point or continuous run? The CMX works in both directions whereas some in only one.
You can also make your own of course. It is not too difficult.
73
Bruce in the Peg
Most track cleaning cars do a so so job. CMX is best but I find that you need to run the masonite type too unless you want to deal with the more volatile solvents. Irun the CMX with two cheap masonite cars for best results.
Any HON3 cars avail? Or do I have to custom make 1.
Harven,
There are many and there are also many ways to clean and maintain your track, from track gleaming, masonite drag cars you name it. Except for gleaming which I have not used, most others I have. Frommy experience and my opinion along with many others who use them. I consider the CMX Track cleaning car to be the best, a little pricey, but worth it. I have two, but I have a rather large layout.
Hi
I use this one from Bachmann.
I got it for 20$ in a Montreal hobby Shop, I bought two. You can replace the pad with very fine sandpaper pads and well, honestly it works quite nicely. It is not for heavy duty cleaning, but if you keep it running along, since it looks good too, you run trains and it cleans and you don't really have to mind about it.
:)
Have a good day!
Antoine
How well do they work? are some brands better then others and are they worth the money?
Thanks, The "Harven"