What is the best & easiest way to keep track clean
A "Bright Boy" style track eraser is one popular way. There are also track cleaning cars and locomotives which have a abrasive pad under the body of the car or loco. Use a very fine eraser to minimize scratching of the rail. If you got the current issue of MR, there is a great article about keeping track and rolling stock clean.
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Do the search on this forum and you will find some recent threads on this subject which give in great detail excellent ways to keep track clean and minimize the number of times it has to be done. Jeffrey's method really works, and I believe it is called the gleam way of doing it which many have used. I don't know who first did it. Involves an eraser, then fine sanding, then burnishing with a washer, and finally brands of polish which don't hurt electrical flow, often applied with cork. There are other ways people have found as satisfactory solutions too.
Hal
If you're using brass track, the easiest way to keep it clean is to replace it with nickel-silver track, which shouldn't require cleaning unless the environment in your layout room is particularily hostile.
Wayne
TA462 wrote:I use a CMX Clean Machine on my layout. It works very well and its a lot easier then polishing your track.
Page 42 of May 2007 issue of MR.
I actually tried the way mentioned in the article & WOW, it works.
I cleaned a section of track as described & the train sped up through this area & slowed down at the spot where I had stopped.
I had never thought about using wood to clean metal! Go figure!
Gordon
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A couple of other considerations:
First, clean all your track at once (or at least before running any trains). Otherwise you'll drag the gunk from the dirty part to the clean part.
Second, for the same reason, clean all your metal wheels at the same time as the track, and replace any plastic ones with metal.
>> oops, that got away from me. Meant to add this:
All the previous conversation has been about how to get your track clean.
To keep your track clean, by far the best way is to run trains! It's true.
jecorbett wrote:There are a number of methods, each has its advantages and disadvantages. The Bright Boy eraser is probably the best way to remove caked on crud for track that hasn't been used in a while. It is also the neatest method for cleaning track. The disadvantage is that the abrasives in the eraser will scratch the rail heads and some believe this will make the rails more prone to collecting dirt and grime. There are a number of solvents that will clean the tops of the rails. I like using Rail Zip because a little goes a long way. You can apply a few drops every few feet and you can run a loco over the track to spread the solvent. It is also a good product for cleaning the wheels of your locos. The best long term solution is a metal polish. There are a number of popular brands. The drawback with these is they can be messy. If you are not careful, it is easy to get it on the ties and insides of the rails where it is difficult to clean off and very unsightly if allowed to dry. You want to apply these polishes sparingly to just the tops of the rails. A small piece of cork or foam roadbed glued to a small block of wood makes a handy applicator for these polishes. Proponents of metal polishes say that it will keep track clean for years. I'll have to take their word for that because I have only recently used them on a large scale. So far, it has seemed to keep the railheads clean and conducting the electricity.
JE:
I've been hearing about polishes for the past couple of years, and I'm really curious. I have a garage railroad (the garage is only half insulated), and though I run my trains frequently, I find that I have to clean my track fairly often. I can't really use solvents because of the dust situation in the garage, so I generally use a VERY mild abrasive cleaner and a vacuum.
Now, my question. Though polishing the rails is obviously going to improve conductivity, does it have any effect on the pulling power of my locos? I have a rather generous (24x24, HO scale) garage layout, with wide curves (34-36" radius) and gradients of between 2-2.4%. I also use Tomar pickup shoes on all of my locos.
Any thoughts on this? I run fairly long trains on the layout (20-30 cars). Oh, by the way, I clean my loco drivers pretty religiously.
Just curious.
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
Jeff--
THANKS! I'm going to look into it. I know that Micromark has a polish that's supposed to be really quite good. Now, one question--and I hope I don't sound terribly stupid about this, but do you clean the rails BEFORE applying the polish, or just apply it directly and let it do its thing?
You'll probably find as many variations on track cleaning as there are model railroaders!
Personally I use three methods:
CP5415 wrote: Page 42 of May 2007 issue of MR.I actually tried the way mentioned in the article & WOW, it works.I cleaned a section of track as described & the train sped up through this area & slowed down at the spot where I had stopped.I had never thought about using wood to clean metal! Go figure!Gordon
I have used a piece of 1/2" square homasote. It cleans the rail and is not abrasive.
Steve B.
Hi,
I think It's a never ending work.
I have good result with a bright boy cleaning, followed by polishing the track with a polish creem for metal.
I use the old "John Allen" method with severals car equiped with a masonite pad ( a half one tickness because I model in N scale) which are included in train to polish every time the track.
I also have included in my time table, every one hour scale, a railcar which is a peddler but in fact the railcar is a polisher with a pad so I am sure the main like is cleaned.
Best of all is running our train as often as possible in every scale feet of track.
Marc/Belgium