You’re off to a nice start there !! I saw my favorite 6464 boxcar there too !! The black with orange door NH boxcar !!
Thanks, John
Great collection! I can’t wait to see that super O with the trains.
I would recommend you put away the sandpaper, and clean your track rails with a scotchbrite pad (green scrubber on the sponges) and denatured alcohol. The sandpaper will damage the tinplate coating.
Kurt
Hrm… does the alcohol remove the oxidation easy? Because I got the sandpaper idea from my maintenence book. It’s 600 grit, finer than an emery board. It’s pretty bad (the oxidation)… some of the track I’ve even been using my dremel to spin off rust at the base of the tubular parts.
I guess I can try it … what difference will I see? (or feel when touching the track?)
scotch brite pad will basicly remove the rust the
Nice website! What did you build it in?
Started in illustrator, then photoshop, then dreamweaver. I’m big into table-less design with CSS. Web design is my full time job, been doing it for 12 years now. =)
Your DIVs are off by 1 pixel… sorry - my full time job too… [;)]
Not in Firefox… IE7 is fine too… but in IE6 I see it.
So you’re a web bubba and are still using IE6 huh? [:P]
Have to at work. [:(]
I couldn’t check IE6 at home (it’s not installed there anymore), but like you we use IE6 at work, so I have FF, IE6 and a stand alone version of IE7. I’ll try to remove the bug but I’m not sure it’s worth it. lol.
Hey clickmatch,
Nice start, I can’t wait to see exactly what motive power you have there.
I too recommend staying away from sandpaper of any kind. I know it is recommended in some places but believe me, the scotchbrite pads, dremel tool and whatever cleaning agent you use will do the trick.
As for cleaning the track itself, think of it this way, the objective of cleaning the track is to take the rust/grime off of the top of the rails for better contact between the train’s wheels and the outside rails and/or the contact roller and the center rail. As for the tarnish on the sides of the rails, well if you look at real train tracks the tops are shiney from the wheels rolling on them and the sides are dirty, rusted, tarnished… from exposure to the elements. Now when I started to “clean up” my 100 - 125 pieces of second-hand Post War, tinplate, O gauge track I too went to work hard on the sides to get them like new only to have someone on this forum point out what I just told you and, that many of them spent a great deal of time “weathering” their track to get that authentic look. So why bother? I took his advice and it was easier from then on.
One last personal point. Although my childhood layouts were tinplate (O27), my best friend’s was Super O and I cannot tell how much I wished mine was too. It was the most realistic of it’s time. Sometimes makes me want to start looking for it instead of tinplate. Why Lionel never pursued it or ever went bact to producing it I’ll never understand. Look at some of the other premium realistic track out there today, Super O clones. I know there were issues with it but over time they could have been worked out.
Anyway, my two cents. Keep on having fun and keep us posted as to your progress.
Mike
Yes, I agree with the weathering. I have only been really getting grime off the top and inside of the rails, and only on the top tubular part. (Where the trains will contact the track)
Very nice website and some cool trains/equipment. Is the center rail brass on that track? I met a guy who had a few pieces of that track as well as a couple switches and he really liked it.
Not to go OT, but who is your host for your site and is there a WYSIWYG editor you prefer that is CHEAP? I’ve got a “freeware” editor called Pagebreeze that is okay, but it’s not very robust and I doubt it could do anything like the work you’ve done…
Very nice site! I look forward to following your progress. [:)]
Nice site, I’ll be looking forward to watching your progress as well. I have plans myself and am still planning and recently finsihed cleaning a bunch of old postwar Tubular I had from Dad and have been acquiring. See this thread http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/1167184/ShowPost.aspx where I made a post detailing my cleaning method. I opted very early on in the task to leave the sides of the rails alone…way too time consuming plus as mentioned already weathering (Rust) on the sides is very prototypical.
Looking at the pictures of your track made me think about laying it all out on my slab outside and hitting it with the pressure washer to get all the ties clean QUICK and then I’d use my grinder with the burnishing wheel on the rail heads to shine them up QUICK.
Good luck!
Roland
Ok,I’m a little confused as what “denatured alcohol” is. I just learned from Wikipedia that it is not rubbing alchohol like I originally assumed.
So first, what is the ill effect of rubbing alcohol? Second,what brand of denatured alchohol is out there and easy to find? (Get I get it in a supermarket or Wal-Mart or similar?)
Ok, I got some denatured alchohol… but I’m still curious what the regular rubbing alcohol does… I assume it ruins the plastic?
Seeing click’s photos and his beginnings makes me wonder how many of us started off just this same way (not as website builders) but rather with our intial steps as we returned to Lionel railroading getting out a restoring the tarnished trains of our childhood.
It is what I started doing back in 1979.