I see here in the forum and on another ones lot of discussions about gleaming track even if the whole process was not well explained.
It will be useful for some to repeat the process from a gum-sanded track to a polished one because so much people are so frustrated whith track cleaning process.
I was myself very septical about gleaming until last week.
Reading all the post about the subject, I made a try on a small part of track on my layout; Beleive me it wanted a lot of polishing, because I was using a like “bright boy” pad to clean my track for years.
I must admit the results are amazing and I will never use again such as a bright boy again.
Modeling in Nscale the trains run like a charm on this part of track and even the layout is for now stored in a non heated room a train has starded to run slowly this morning whithout any hesitation on this part of track.
I am very concerned by track cleaning because my layout track plan has a lot of small industrial spurs and you know what about Nscale and electrical contacts…
So the following thread seemed to be very exciting;
Recently on a train forum in UK a man speak about the ever seen results about polishing his track, we are all sure about that, but he didn’t stay whith the polished track only.
When his track is polished he directly follow the process whith No-Ox, an industrial contact cleaner and conductive paste which he applied lightly on the files of track.
He say the results are far better than expected and the track don’t need anymore wipe for more than three years.
I don’t know much about it, but it seems the combination of polishing and the use of No-Ox are the final answer we are asking f
Marc - I’m not the one you are thinking of but I do use No-Ox. On Trainboard there was a general post on track cleaning. In that thread you saw a poster reply under the handle GreyOne. This is where I 1st heard of No Ox. He made some good points and I started to look hard at it. I also found he made a similar post on ScalesRails but added some other points and that was enough for me to try it. I figured $10 for paste was worthy of a try before dropping better than $100 on a track cleaning car.
The easiest way I found to explain how this works is like a car -first you wash it then wax it. For track- clean it and then you protect your hard workwith No-ox. I cleaned the track with mineral spirits - Joe Fugate makes some great points on why this is good way to clean track and then I used the No- Ox.
I have a only 165’ of total track (from the layout analysis) and it took me better than hour and half to No-Ox the track. It’s been over 3 months since then I haven’t done a thing to my track in terms of cleaning. I haven’t really ran trains to keep it clean but I have run them enough to move any junk around that would have normally occurred in that time. About the same time I made sure that only metal wheels would go on the track all others were pulled until compliant.
GreyOne states years of trouble free service after one cleaning and there where several others also stated very positive results as well. Time will only tell for me but I can’t see why if someone used this before OP’s season there is no reason you shouldn’t have clean track for at least the season.
You can get it online from a couple of places. I did an internet search to order mine but found that Walthers now carries it.
I can reply MOST POSITIVELY on the benefits of Gleaming! I first heard about the process years ago in a post on a forum by Richard Breton, a.k.a. “semaphore”. I was skeptical and only did a small little-used siding on my N scale layout to try it out. I was amazed at how well it worked and promptly Gleamed my whole layout. That was nearly 4 years ago and I haven’t cleaned the tracks since then! I don’t run trains very often, sometimes months between runs. The fact that the trains perform great regardless of the amount of time that has passed is proof enough for me.
This past holiday season, I built a small loop of track for under the Christmas tree. HO gauge for On30 equipment on a piece of 1 1/2" foam. After laying and ballasting the track, I Gleamed it, then applied No-Ox. During the entire Christmas season, I had no trouble whatsoever. The real test will come next Christmas when I pull the loop out and run trains. I have every expectation of success.
Based on my experience with my N scale layout, I’d say the No-Ox may not be necessary. I’ll report my results next Christmas.