My wife bought me the Micro-Mark wheel cleaning kit for Chrstmas. The insturctions are probably pre-DCC, but they say to hook the track up to a DC power source. Has anybody used this with DCC?
Gene
If this is the wheel cleaner from kadee, there should be no problem as each side of the divided brush supplies power only to its side of the loco. I think it would work better on diesels than steam but it does have an extra wire to attach to the tender of dc steamers.
No, it's not the Kadee wheel cleaner. It's the Micro-Mark, which is three or four sections of Bachmann EZ-track with one small section of track replaced with what looks like a dull knife blade over which one lays cleanser saturated pads. It comes with two feeder wires soldered to rail joiners to provide power.
I have the Kadee, but haven't used it because of the wheel scratching issue.
Gene
I use to use a section of tee shirt with cleaning fluid draped over the tracks. I saw on micro mark what your talking about. I don't see why you can't use it with DCC.
Neither do I. Hence my question.
Gene
Gene, I use a cloth on the track to the same end. It works equally well with dc and DCC. The only caveat with DCC is to be sure your decoders can handle the stall current of your locomotives' motors. If you did that when you installed the decoders, you will have no problem. But if you install decoders on blind faith, you may pop some with this method.
P.S. Your question was in no way stupid.
I've used the cloth method myself. I guess the advantage this has is the modification of the track for where the cleaning pad goes - getting rid of the "hump."
Gene