After having just watched a video on the Atlas track cleaning car, I wondered… has anyone out there actually had a chance to use one?
Medina:
Yes, and I’m very happy with it. I have a garage layout that because of dust and pollen here in the Central Valley requires ‘dry’ cleaning the tracks instead of using a liquid cleaner. The Atlas car has three accessories–burnisher, buffer and vacuum.
All work extremely well on my layout. In fact, I’m thinking seriously of buying another one so that when I do have to clean my track–which is less frequently than before I bought the Atlas–I can use the buffer and vacuum together in one pass, instead of running it around twice.
But I like it a lot. I have to clean my track FAR less frequently since I bought it. And that vacuum attachment really works well!
It also has a well for using liquid track cleaner in conjunction with the buffer pad, but I haven’t used that because of seasonal pollen build-up on my particular layout. But I would assume that it would work very well on insulated layouts.
Tom
I don’t own one myself but my LHS has one on their layout and I’ve played around with it. The only thing I like about it is the vacuum feature. It really does pick up stuff off the track. I’m not sold on the cleaning pads spinning on the rail to clean them. I think my CMX Clean Machine does a far better job then the Atlas track cleaner. If you have DCC then you need to add a decoder to it as well. I’m on the fence on this one.
Hello,
I must say that the previous two posters hit the nail on the head. I have the Atlas track cleaner and the CMX clean machine. The Atlas track cleaner only gets used in vacuum mode. My experience is that the pads scour the rails with the abrasive pad. The buffing pads work but which is just another location for the dirt to reside. The flow of the fuid can also not be changed, unlike the CMX clean machine, as well as all you need to do the the CMX machine is put under a new pad from your local cloth store and it is ready to go again.
So if you are looking for a car to vacuum the tracks go with Atlas, otherwise I would be more inclined to purchase the CMX clean machine.
Hope it helps
Frank