I’ve mentioned this in various posts about track cleaning fluids, special cars, etc. Well, let me explain the situation tonight, and maybe someone can help me figure out why my layotu it like this.
I haven’t run trains in over a month. In fact it may be close to 2 months. I’ve been extremely busy at work,a dn what little railroad time I’ve been getting in, I’ve been putting reistor wheelsets in my cars and preparing for the club show at the end of June. However, tonight I finished some more cars and decided to give them a test run. I pulled out a Stewart DS4-4-1000 loco that’s been sitting in my carrying box since the beginnign of February when I got back from the winter Timonium show. I coupled this to the head of my train, 8 loaded hoppers, a tank car, and caboose. I turned on my DCC system and turned on track power. I started the loco and let it run at a crawl - all the way around without the slightest flicker of the headlight. No cleaning the track, it just ran, smooth as always.
Granted the layout is in a liveable space (spare bedroom). But it has essentially been gathering dust for almost 2 months. I’ve had a window open most of the time as well so it didn;t get too hot. I’ve been painting, but have not vacuumed the floor or the layout. The only track cleaning I’ve ever done is to clean off any oops made when painting the rails, and only about 12 feet of the main line has been painted. The rest is just how it was when I put it down.
I can’t explain why I never have to clean my track. My trains just run, not flickers, stall, stutters or sound dropouts. I’ve never done the ‘gleaming’ procedure. My track is plain old off the shelf Atlas Code 83 flex and turnouts. Every rail joiner has a pwoer feed, except at power district boundaries, but I don;t even have half the feeders on the far side hooked up yet.
Perhaps the real answer is that all these people who think they need to clean their track all the time aren’t really having a dirty track pr
I have locos that always run smoothly around the layout. Then I have other locos that stumble and stall until I clean the track perfectly. I have to say, my Atlas locos seem to run the best, and have the least problems.
Generally I don’t clean track either. I do try to keep everything covered with very lightweight plastic dropcloths when I am gone which does help keep down the accumulation of dust. I do think that location and the season of the year has a lot to do with it. Mine is in a basement and prior to the heating season I am changing out furnace filters for thw winter which holds down some of the dust. During spring and summer I get more dust coming in the house because everything is open and I do have a farmer’s field behind me that gets plowed every spring. Thus is the reason for the plastic.
I bought a CMX track cleaning car last year, but I have yet to take it out of the box.
I never clean my track, and everything runs smoothly.
I use nothing but Intermountain metal wheels on all of my rollng stock.
The only time that I have to clean my track is when I work on my layout, replacing or rerouting track and then ballasting. Once the matte medium/water glue mix dries, I have to use a Bright Boy to clean that section of track to remove the dried glue.
Based on my experience, and apparently yours as well, i believe that the concept of regular track cleaning is much overblown.
I clean my track a couple times a year. The biggest cause of dirty track is caused by the arcing you get when running your loco’s, not from dust. Now if you were in a garage or an unfinished basemant then it would be the other way around.
Not necessarily. My layout is in an unfinished basement, and I never have to clean my track. As far as arcing goes, I have never experienced that problem, at least not to the extent that I am required to clean my track.
Rich, all locomotive wheels arc on the rail. That’s what that black stuff is when you wipe your finger across the rail. Your lucky you don’t have an issue in the basement. Most are very dusty.
Randy, I used to clean my track religiously, now it’s about twice a year. I do pull a track cleaning car, one of those box cars with the hard pumice-like pad hanging beneath it. When I hand clean the track I try to do a very good job but there is one section that is in a short tunnel that hasn’t been hand cleaned in a year and a half. So far I haven’t had any issues. I have about 85 feet of mainline with drop feeders every 6 feet or so. A few, very few… of my cars still have plastic wheels… maybe 3 of them. The layout is in a fairly well sealed (from dust) room.
Someone on this board once said that he only cleaned track when the lights started to flicker… [:D]
Maybe it’s all a factor of how dusty, how many feeders, how many cars with plastic wheels and how good the locos run kinda thing.
Part of the answer probably lies in the loco’s you have and how you run them.
If you have modern decent quality loco’s they probably have all wheel pick-up. This pretty much ensures that power will get to the loco even if there are dirty spots. A decent weight will make this even better and less likely to get arcing.
If you run at maximum speed you are likely going to get arcing which will build up carbon on the track and wheels and require more cleaning. Running at low to medium speeds with loco’s that have all wheel pickup will not arc much if at all because of the improved track contact.
Note: the black stuff on the rail is not necessarily from arcing. The oxidation from nickle silver is also black.
As a retired chemist, I’ve always associated the term Nickel Silver as an alloy of Copper, Nickel, and usually zinc. This particular alloy does resist oxidation, but when oxidation is present it will present itself as a darkish or black deposit.
However, I don’t know the exact composition of Nickel Silver rail used in our hobby and am wondering if anyone here might know the answer to that question??
I have gleamed my track, so it doesn’t get really cruddy.
Never the less, when I haven’t run locos in a while, I dip a rag in denatured alcohol and give everything a quick wipe-down. Takes about 10 minutes for about 100 linear feet of track.
I think humidity has a lot to do with oxidation and crud buildup on track and wheels. Up to last year on our display layout at Boothbay Railway Village, we had to spend at least 1/2 hour a day cleaning track and locomotive wheels on days the exhibit was open. Trains run 6 to 8 hours a day with doors and windows open (no A/C) and visitors coming and going all the time. We were using Centerline track cleaners, one with rubbing alcohol for solvent and one dry to pick up.
Last summer, we tested No-OX on one section, and ran for days without having to clean; so we applied it to the whole layout with very good results. http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/171-226
For years I read about people with dirty track problems, both in the hobby press and later on the internet. Meanwhile, my trains just kept rolling along on rails which never had a cleaning more serious than a swipe with a dry paper towel. When things stuttered (usually after many unit-hours of running) I cleaned the wheels.
Note that I don’t have a modern, all wheel pickup, roster. Some of my MU cars pick up from one side of a short-wheelbase four wheel truck at each end. Quite a few of my steam locos aren’t much better, while the only difference between my MU cars, my catenary motors and my diesel-hydraulics is that the locos have longer-wheelbase trucks mounted closer together.
I can’t help wondering if, in the quest for perfectly clean rails, a lot of the liquid and semi-liquid products people use actually exascerbate the problem. My layouts haven’t always occupied ideal space (the present one is in a non-climate-controlled garage) but they have always been reliable in operation. Knowing me, I rather doubt that it’s because some Diety likes me…
Randy, I have the same experience as you. I can come back to my exposed layout, although it is in a carpeted basement, and get my trains to run with no problems even if not a single item has moved on the layout in weeks.
I have to be honest, though, and admit that I do get dead spots on my layout because I didn’t solder all/most of my joiners. When I return to the layout after a few weeks, crank it all up, and get a stall, I don’t reach for a rag with alcohol or lacquer thinner, or a Bright Boy… I touch a wooden skewer to the joiners and the locos always get power. So, I cheated electrically, and that is my problem. In fact, we had guests for dinner last night, so I went to the trains early to make sure they would run. I lit up the steamers and moved them around. Sure enough, in my two typical trouble spots, one with a solder that needs to be re-done, the train stopped. Pressure on the joints got them to go again.
I think it is electrical feed and between-rail continuity, and not the surfaces of the rails that is involved in many member’s problems.
I have Peco code 75 tracks and I had problems before I gleamed the rails. And my method of finding problems is a 2 axle German Köf made by Trix! Try running it at a crawl and it WILL find dirt spots!
After gleaming it never finds dirt anymore! I only wipe the tracks for my own well being… Not that it leaves any marks on the rag anymore…
A combination of varous cleaning agents and methods, plus lack of electrical contact, are my theories behind problems as well. I can;t imagine using any fluid that ould leave a residue, all that can possibly do is attract dirt. And cleanign with anythign abrasive - that just makes scratches to hodl more dirt, which needs more cleaning, which leads to more scratches… never ending cycle.
I don;t solder all my joints, just on the curves. But all joiners are powered. This too has been dismissed as trouble waiting to happen - well, the part where I haven;t gone back and connected all the feeders yet is exactly the part of the layout I have painted the track and added ballast. And I work the brush in the joiners so I con’t have shiny spots, And I do paint the back side even though you can’t really see it - a camera at track level would see it.
I do work fairly carefully when laying track, and I don’t use the same rail joiners that have been connected and diconnected many times over. I’m not saying people should shortcut construction, but with a little care and patience while building, less than complete overkill can result in a reliably operating layout.
I’m another of the slobs who don’t clean track (except after doing ballasting or adding lineside scenery). I have soldered all of the rail joiners together, but have only a pair of wires feeding the power (DC) to the layout, which currently is comprised of about 200’ of mainline. This doesn’t include passing sidings, double track, staging, or industrial spurs. Most of my rolling stock still has its original plastic wheels, too. The layout has been in operation for more than 15 years.
Thanks, Rich, but if you could see my shop right now, you’d appreciate the aptness of the word. [(-D] Let’s just say that the scene below is still around, but is currently extremely-well camouflaged. [swg]
