Clean track is a seperate issue from scratched rails. Of course track needs to be cleaned periodically, especially if it goes with being used for a period of time. That is true whether one has scratched the railheads with an abrasive cleaner or not. I remain unconvinced that microscopic scratches on railheads has a negative effect on conductivity.
Nickel silver oxidizes very slowly and the film of oxidation protects against further oxidation. The film isnât conductive but it is so thin it doesnât electrically insulate the metal very effectively.
Somewhere on the interweb it mentions sulfur in the air promotes oxidation on nickel silver. If you have a gas furnace, water heater or a gas cooktop inside your home chances are good you are living in a sulfur enriched environment.
To say that nickel silver doesnât oxidize because itâs a component metal that combines with the oxygen isnât a useful thing to know. Nickel silver as an alloy does oxidize i.e. corrodes, by combining with oxygen. What remains is nickel silver coated with a compound that isnât nickel silver but a metal oxide. Steel rusts in the same way. Whatâs left remains steel coated with iron oxide.
Nickel is hard to oxidize and zinc oxidizes preferentially to copper, higher valence, a well known phenomenon with bronze or brass immersed in seawater. To protect underwater bronze sacrificial âzincsâ are attached to steel or iron parts submerged also. In nickel silver I would expect the zinc to oxidize preferentially. The zinc element at the surface of the metal would form an oxide resistant to further oxidation. Eventually the zinc at surface will be exhausted and the copper will then begin to oxidize forming the characteristic black/green crud. All along the nickel percentage at surface will rise slowing the oxidation process.
As for micro gouges in the railhead promoting corrosion this is also a well known phenomenon. It results from the significant increase in surface area exposed to the atmosphere. Polished metals corrode more slowly than unpolished.
Whether it can be worthwhile gleaming (polishing by burnishing) the railhead seems doubtful to me. To begin with gleaming would remove any protective oxide coating that had already formed (although the resulting smooth surface would promote fo
Well, it all comes back around to the effort put into cleaning track, and thereby the time and effort needed to avoid it if one desires.
Iâve sort of taken the approach that if the amount of time and effort needed to prevent a problem exceeds the consequences and remedies of the problem, Iâd just let the problem happen and then remedy the consequences.
To prevent track from getting dirty, I wipe it down with a
I clean track that wonât run trains. If the trains still run the track stays âdirtyâ.
You really canât tell if the track needs cleaning just by looking at it.
Youâd have to be able to see how thick the oxide film has got. You canât tell that by looking.
[(-D] You make a great point.
-Kevin
[Y]
So do I. The argument seems to be that the microscopic scratches attract dirt and then the build of dirt has a negative effect on conductivity. Whatever.
Rich
Scratches in the railhead MIGHT âattractâ dirt. Nobody here has provided proof one way or the other.
âNot-scratchesâ in the railhead CANâT âattractâ dirt, because there arenât any.
There is a potential downside with scratched rail that does not happen with unscratched. It would make sense to avoid scratched railhead until it has been proven not to matter.
Which it has not.
Sulfur in the air produces sulfides, not oxides.
Ed
As the OP of this thread, I will take it back to Square One for a moment.
My original point was that the lesser used sidings may give oxidation a better chance to work than on the more heavily used mainlines. This thread quickly morphed into a discussion of micro-abrasions caused by Bright Boy. That was my bad for mentioning the Bright Boy in the first place when I could have simply said that after cleaning the rails on the sidings, the stalls disappeared.
But, here is something to consider. This is a new layout which I only recently completed. I had initially cleaned all of the sidings with my CMX car after ballasting and never once used the Bright Boy on the sidings until just recently while testing loco performance on the sidings for really the first time since installing and cleaning the track. The track was brand new Atlas flex track at the time of installation. So, the Bright Boy was never even a factor on these sidings. So much for micro abrasions, at least in this instance.
Rich
Your railheads are going to collect dirt and grime whether they are scratched or not. The question then becomes whether that will result in poorer conductivity on railheads which are scratched as opposed to those which are smooth. I see no reason to believe that is true. Iâll keep using my track erasers because to me it is the most thorough and fastest way to remove whatever has built up on the rails.
Agreed.
With sincerity, its probably a good idea to clean the track on a regular basis whether or not the trains have stalled.
But trying to prevent the black schmutz on the cloth is an overreaction, IMO. And trying to predict the amount of extra schmutz you might get by different cleaning methods, pretty futile.
Yes, those of us who donât use a Bright Boy have found we still have to clean the track. Did anyone suggest otherwise?
You initially cleaned your sidings with your CMX car. Immediately thereafter, dust starts to accumulate. Perhaps other stuff, too. Your choice of words implies that you didnât do your test running right afterwards, but waited some amount of time.
You said you had an unfinished basement. This would imply an open ceiling (without sheetrock). This type of construction will result in much more dust on the layout than if there is a smooth ceiling.
For some reason, you chose not to use your CMX car, which quite possibly would have cleaned the track well enough so your trains would run.
Clearly, using the Bright Boy solved you contact issues. That does NOT mean the CMX car wouldnât. But now you have scratches on your railhead, which may or may not be bad.
My view is that IF you can clean your track without adding scratches to the railtop, there is no downside. There MIGHT be if there are scratchesâI prefer not to find out.
Ed
Ed Ed, thank you for your rant. [(-D] [(-D]
Yeah, when I see repeated examples of ignorance and illogic, it does kind of get me started.
Probably would have been better to have just played with trains instead. On my clean track. That never sees Bright Boys. 'Cause it doesnât need them.
Ed
As far as I ever heard, itâs pure nickel-silver, which means itâs actually an alloy of copper, zinc and nickel primarily. According to Piko America, it can also have a small bit of lead.
No brass that I know of.
[edit] I just read the rest of this thread. Quite a bit of misinformation here, and even more misleading information.
Nickel silver can be considered a brass alloy with nickel added?? [*-)] Yeah, sure, whatever. Making such a statement is akin to saying 17-7PH Steel is just pig iron with a few impurities added.
Alloys donât oxidize? Sorry, not at all true. ALL alloys oxidize. Go take a look at the appropriate section of a Markâs Handbook for Mechanical Engineering. Or better yet, look it up in a Materials Handbook.
Even the most corrosion-resistant stainless steels will oxidize over time, albeit very slowly in some compositions in ânormalâ conditions.
I have a CMX machine which I love for cleaning my track. However, itâs a PITA for doing stub-end sidings with all the back and forth motion of the locomotives driving it.
My solution is to just use the CMX car by itself and propel it with the old 0-5-0 on sidings. Itâs much faster and does the same good job.
Great points.
Unfortunately we have a participant in here that insists on answering when he should be asking, and has no problem posting innacurate information.
He believes it adds value to the conversation to post incorrect on purpose, and has stated so many times.
We all must tolerate this.
-Kevin
I sure wish that anyone replying to this thread would go back and read my initial post. I said that my best guess is that the lesser used sidings gives âoxidationâ a better chance to work than on the mainlines. Maybe it is oxidation, maybe it isnât. Maybe it is something else. I did originally follow up the word oxidation with a question mark.
But, I can tell you this. Whatever it is, it is the not the result of using a Bright Boy. In hindsight, I made the mistake of even mentioning the words Bright Boy. Those sidings never saw a Bright Boy until I used it on Thursday to solve my stalling issues on the sidings. Until then, the track in question had only been cleaned once with my CMX car, no Bright Boy.
No one has yet responded to my suggestion that the little used sidings were the problem, not the more heavily used mainlines. So be it, but it makes sense to me.
Rich
I thought my original answer indicated I thought it was organic buildup of some sort, and that different solvent/cleaning techniques might have worked. The whole Bright Boy discussion, including digressions into gleaming technique, is unrelated except insofar as mechanical removal of âanyâ unconductive or crappily-conductive material on the railhead âworksâ to remove the deposits⌠which of course it did in this particular case.
My issue with it is a little different. If I used a 360-grit disc in a polisher to remove road grime and bird turds from my car, Iâd assuredly see the color better. But I might also ask if there are âside effectsâ other than getting that dirt off pronto⌠[(-D] What I was trying to say in some of the prior posts is that something less aggressive than the Bright Boy might do the same at removing the crud, but not scratch up what may already (from no fault of your own) be a non-optimal contact patch.
I think the discussion of oxide/sulfide/whatever deposits is a red herring in this specific context. You might have spot conditions in your home or train room, like some other posters in the past, that cause accelerated reactions with the metal in all the railheads â but I hear the hoofbeats of zebras.
A concern here is how effectively non-abrasive cleaning actually removes deposits as opposed to smearing them more thinly. Anyone who has tried to clean a mirror knows how stubbornly the surface holds even small traces of grease that no amount of âglass cleanerâ seems to get. Thatâs because solvents only suspend grease; ammonia only modifies the grease molecules⌠the only thing that actually gets it off is for the cloth or whatever to absorb it away from its attraction to the glass surface. I suspect the same thing goes on wholesale in solvent-and-pad track cleaning, and is a factor in how John Allenâs Masonite-backside pads are so effective.<
I think that Mikeâs raising the question of sulphur content in the air is an interesting one. The oxygen interaction O causes whatever oxidation there is. But I wonder if a higher content of Sulphur, S, (which is defined as a nonmetallic chemical element belonging to the oxygen group) impacts the oxidation process enough to matter.
As we know, Sulphur is a âdirtyâ element, in that low sulphur coal is better than high sulphur coal.
Might have nothing to do with it though.