I was wondering what most of you use to clean the wheels on your locomotives? I’ve seen a electrafied wire brush cleaner from Trix but it looks like it would excelerate wheel wear. Any thoughts?
The Trix wheel cleaner is not too bad. It won’t work on all locos. I prefer to clean my wheels w/ alcohol. Wet a paper towel w/ alcohol lay it across to rails and run the loco wheels on to the towel . Hold the loco and crank up the throttle. Turn engine around, reverse and do the same. Pilot and pick-up tender wheels have to be cleaned by hand using a Q tip or the like.
Bob K.
UPSIDE DOWN attached to your power pak with alligator clip’s, using an Alcohol soaked cotton swab.
The power pak turns the wheels, the alcohol loosen’s the gunk, and more importantly transfer’s it to the cotton scwab.
I use Bob’s ‘towel’ method for cars.
That’s the way we do it.
I’ve always used the Q-tip alcohol method like the other memebers, and paint thinner for the really stubborn spots if I have to.
That’s the fun part of model railroading. Cleaning tracks, engine and rolling stock wheels every so often…
trainluver1
I don’t have any clips, so I hold the loco upside down and clean the visible portion of the wheel running surface with a Q-Tip dipped in Goof-Off. You’d expect me to suggest a light touch, and you’d be correct. Only enough Goof-Off to thoroughly wet the tip, and then a light wipping. Dry the wheels with paper towel, place loco on track, run for 1/2 revolution of the wheels to present the uncleaned surfaces, and repeat. Might sound tedious, but watching and listening to jerky, stuttering trains is waaay worse.
Same application but I substituted MAAS and cut through 40 years of crud on a Lionel HO Steamer.
Thank you for all your suggestions, I will go down to the train room and try some of them right away! I read about the MAAS on a track cleaning post after I posted my origanal post and I’m anxous to try it. I run my trains while I’m working on the layout to entertain my son and they have picked up some pretty stubburn dirt.
Wipeing a thin coat of MAAS on an a piece of old thin bed sheet works great, then use a cleane piece to polish with. Also start with the alchol method of laying the cloth on the track, dont really have to handle the locomotive as it will power over the cloth to start the process. Hold it with light pressure and gently moving side to side…John
I use the paper towel across the tracks method when possible. There are some locos -old ones or cheap ones- that don’t have enought pickup wheels to do this; then the upside down method comes into play. Upside down often reqires 3 hands to get power to the wheels.
Don’t forget to clean :
-non-driving wheels
-teneder wheels
-all the cars on your layout. If the drivers are dirty itmay have come from the cars and will certainly get transferred to the cars.
To add to Selector’s advice, don’t use this on the plastic wheels you find on older HO Locos and cars, this will disolve them. If you need to clean wheels with traction rings, stick with the swab and alcohol method. In lieu of cotton swabs such as Q-tips, I use the foam swabs from the makeup department. Hit your local dollar store for some of these cheap. Make sure the cleaner you’re using won’t disolve the foam before you press it to the wheels. I’ve stayed pretty much with alochol and haven’t had problems.
For the tough crud, I use the Kadee wheel cleaner. I’m not familiar with the Trix one mentioned above, but they sound similar. DEFINATELY don’t use these on traction rings.