track cleaner

[dagnarble]

 
Is there one track cleaning car and chemical  that is the best. I only want to buy one and would like to know that it will do the job as well as it can be done Thanks

[Billm10454]

I don't know if this is the best, but I have one and it does a great job of cleaning the track. As far as the fluid I prefer acetone.

[Billm10454]

Sorry, here is the link:
http://www.traintekllc.com/product/CMX-HO.html

[simkon]

There is no one best method, I honestly find a combination of methods to be most effective depending on the situation.

[Jim Banner]

Note that Billm10454's link is to a BRASS track cleaning car.  That helps explain how he can use acetone as a track cleaning fluid.  Acetone quickly removes a wide variety of dirt but personally, I won't have it in the house, let alone the train room.  It dissolves styrene and similar plastics, it is an effective paint remover whether you want to remove the paint or not, and like gasoline, both the vapours and the liquid are extremely flammable.  i don't know where your train room is located but mine is in the basement.  During the heating season, the air is quite dry and before I removed the carpeting, it was quite easy to generate static electricity and sparks.  Like gasoline, acetone can be ignited by sparks from static electricity.  Also, presumably, by sparks from dirty wheels if moving the cleaning car around the layout with a powered locomotive.  And like gasoline, in case of an accidental spill, the vapours can travel along the floor to the closest point of ignition.  In my house, that would be the furnace next to the train room.  Much as I enjoy mushrooms, I don't like mushroom clouds, especially with me in them.  Did I mention that acetone is also a nerve poison and can permanently damage your central nervous system?  This effect is exacerbated by alcohol, whether imbibed or inhaled.

But don't take my word for it.  Have a look at the Material Safety Data Sheet for acetone:
http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/a0446.htm
And while reading the MSDS, keep in mind that it is published by a manufacturer of acetone who would like to present his product in the best possible light.

Jim

[jward]

jim what do you think of the centerline cars with rollers? and goo gone. that combination has worked well for me in both ho and n scales.

[Jim Banner]

I haven't used cleaning cars for years.  A bit of light oil on a small piece of rag to oil the heads of the rails once in a while goes a long way toward keeping the track clean. 

Outdoors, basically the same thing but a drop of oil on each rail and let the train spread it around.  This lets me use aluminum rail with DCC even though the experts tell me that you cannot use track power, let alone DCC, with aluminum rails.  The group I model with does the same thing on our large scale indoor portable railroad and on our museum display railroad.  The H0 display railroad runs 20 thousand trains a year but we only clean the track every five years or so.  In between, we lightly oil the rails from time to time.  Because these trains run for the public at the push of a button, they have to be reliable.  There is rarely anyone at the exhibit to push a train if it stalls.  With oil, we average better than 99.9% reliability (that is one stall or failure to start per 1000 train trips.)  Some years, we have managed 99.99% reliability.

Jim   

[Bill Baker]

Jim,
I find that very interesting.  I was under the impression that oil allowed gunk and grime to adhere to the wheels which caused a build up affecting conductivity.  What kind of oil did you use?

Bill

[ebtbob]

Jward,

    I use the Centerline cars,  one wet and one dry.    I also use 4 of the Walthers CSX reefers with the skider pads.   I used to use Goo Gone but,  as good a cleaner as it is,  Goo Gone leaves too much of a residue on the railheads.   If you do not have clean wheels on your engines and cars, 
Goo Gone will clean those wheels for you and then all that gunk goes back down onto the tracks only to end up on your wheels again.
     The liquid I use can be purchased at good hobby and train stores.  It is called ACT - 6006 by Aero-Car Lubricants,  P.O. Box 336,  Western Springs,  Illinois,  60558. 
       Now,  it really does not matter what type of liquid you use,  but I find it necessary to wipe off any residue left behind to keep the residue from cleaning wheel sets.

[Keusink]

Jim B

What kind of oil do you use? I would think that oil would make traction difficult for HO locos.

If that works for HO, it will sure save me a lot of time cleaning track in tunnels.

Chris

[Jim Banner]

I have used many brands of "conductive oil" including Hob-E-Lube, Bachmann's EZ lube and Labelle 108, to mention just a few.  And of course the classic oil for model railroad rails is Wahl Hair Clipper oil, even though the manufacturer makes no claims about its conductivity.  What these oils have in common is that (1) they are very light (thin) and (2) they do not oxidize.

When the oil is very light, the film it leaves between wheels and rails is very thin.  This allows electricity to still flow between the metal rails and the metal wheels, even though there is oil between them.  In this sense, they conduct electricity, even though putting the probes of an ohmmeter into the oil will show that is has infinitely high resistance.

Another property of a thin film of very light oil is that it has poor lubricating properties.  In model railroading terms, this means that as long as the oil film is thin, there will be little or no loss of tractive effort.   But be warned - while a little bit of oil is good, and bit more is NOT better.  In fact, a bit more will soon have you singing "slip sliding away..."  (teenagers - ask your parents.)

And a third property of a thin film of oil is that it suppresses arcing between rails and wheels.  As a test, run a train or just a locomotive on some clean, dry track is a pitch black room.  Observe the amount of arcing between the pickup wheels and rails.  Then lightly oil the rails with conductive oil and see how much less arcing you get.  The arcing you see occurs every time the current between rail and wheel is interrupted.  The arcing converts small amounts of the rail and wheel metals into their oxides.  These oxides conduct less than the original metals so every time a wheel runs over a gob of them, there is more loss of contact with the rails and more arcing.  And where the metal is taken from the wheels, microscopic pits start to form, little pits that can gather up dirt, causing yet more current interruption and yet more arcing.  When you suppress the arcing, the wheel treads will go from dull (micro pitted) to a mirror shine, both increasing traction and reducing adherence of dirt.  This process may take eight to twelve hours of running but in the end, the wheels stay cleaner with oil than without.

The requirement that the track oil should not oxidize is simply that any oil that does oxidize can leave the equivalent of a coat of varnish on your rails.

Jiim   

[CNE Runner]

I would suggest checking out the new Atlas track cleaning car. This jewel scours, buffs and vacuums your track and is capable of using track cleaning fluids such as isopropanol. Additionally the car can be made DCC compatible if one chooses to install a decoder. Warning: the car is pricey. I, personally, observed a demonstration of this car and was quite impressed. Check out the Atlas website for more details. Check out this unique car at http://www.atlasrr.com/trackmisc/hotrackcleaningcar.htm

Ray