At least once a week the proverbial question arises,“what about dirt on tracks”
there seems to be a few methods on different ways to clean track, Now, just what causes this crap??? dust?? oil?? atmosphere?? smoking?? stuff falling of the cars?? It doesn’t seem possible a steel wheel running on a clean steel rail will create a pile of gunk on the rail and the wheels, someone said plastic gets dirtier than metal, Well, why doesn’t someone take some of this gunk and analyse it, and find out exactly what this crud is, there has to be a chemical explanation to it’s make-up or it is created from nothing(scientifically hard to do) I had too much dust in my house(the kitchen floor) and could not find the source, I took some dust to work one day and used a very high powered microscope, the answer was it was coming from my rug, the dust was tiny fibres of the rug, the answer, from the rug manufacturer? live with it for the next 45 years. Does anyone have the answer to the composition of track dirt out there???
I think it’s mostly dust, and plastic wheels wearing. Skin oils would also play a factor, depending on how often you come into physical contact with your track.
Probably eveything that you mentioned, and also corrosion of the metal track. Ordinary household dust.
Last week I cleaned the tracks on my HO scale modules, they hadn’t been used for probably a year and a half. The pair were boxed together and were standing vertically, so dust could not have fallen on the tracks, but could be present in the air all around as the modules aren’t air tight. The tracks were dirty.
Interesting that modelers still are thinking of adding smoke units to steam engines. Smoke fluid is a kind of oil, and heating it leaves an oily residue over everything, including track.
Bob Boudreau
ALL of the above plus CARBON from wheel arcing. SOMEONE did analyse it - add bit’s of metal (perhap’s from a Brite Boy) - no matter, it all periodically need’s to be cleaned off if you don’t have a hermetically sealed ‘clean’ room.
MR actually did an analysis of track crud several years ago. They found the normal atmosperic contaminates (dust, dead skin, hair, etc), construction contaminates (concrete and wood dust, adhesive and soldering residue), and wear contaminates (graphite and oil lube from locomotives, transfer from plastic wheels).
Nick
It was analyzed by a chemist a couple of years ago at the behest of Tony’s Train Exchange. The results of the analysis should still be somewhere on his web site as one of his “Tony’s Tips” in relation to the CMX Clean Machine, but it will probably require quite a bit of searching of past articles.
Since there is charge air around the rails and the wheels, I’d bet that, in addition to the above, all sorts of aerosols, volatiles, and airborne particles of every possibility in a house are going to be implicated. That includes microscopic carpet fibres, skin particles, dander, hairs, shoe leather, glue volatiles from all of the composite furniture we use, anything that evaporates or dries out over time, and so on. Our house interiors are far dirtier than we imagine.
However, and I keep harping on this whenever the subject comes up, I have a wood stove 19" from one corner of my layout (it’s on right now), a dog, my wife and I, and a house full of “stuff” (thanks, George). I have never cleaned my EZ-Track in the nearly eight months that I have been running three different locos with different sound decoders. I have no problems with drop-out. Why some people complain of dirty track mystifies me. Maybe my time will come…who knows.
Good information above.
For my little 9 foot by 1 foot shelf / test track layout, I wipe the rails with 91% alcohol. Even on a shelf the rails do get dirty. Ever since I switched over to metal wheels, cleaning the track now is down to once a year instead of once every month.
Perhaps you are running your trains regularly, and this keeps off most of the household dust before it becomes a problem?
Bob Boudreau
I suppose that is the reason, Bob, but I go several days at a time without running trains. My wife does laundry several times each week (neither of us is liberated [:-,] ) in the same space, I have a dehumidifier running most hours of the day (blowing air around gently), and with the occasional puff-back from that gosh-darned stove, you’d think my locos would gang up on me. Heck, I live right on the ocean, and this time of year we get quite nasty blows coming right off the Strait of Georgia every other day…literally. That means lots of salt spray in the air. You would think that would be the worst of the bunch. But my locos get the last word.
So, I am left wondering, seriously, what it is about other people’s circumstances that gives me a miss and has them pulling their hair out.
Maybe you have it exactly. Is puzzlement.
The track at the club is horrible, I do as much cleaning as i can stand, and run at least 2 cleaning cars in every train. You can’t stop the tracks from getting dirty, you can only live with it and fight that battle for the rest of your life.
Matthew