[swg]Months ago, in fact last year I made a note on this forum about the use of the above product as used by long time modelrailroaders in my town. Now I’ve been doing this since 1956. I have built at least 6 large roads up to 20X 30; at least those numbers are large for me; as well as smaller pikes. I have tried everything to keep the tracks clean and improve electrical contact.
At meetings here we discuss the pro’s and con’s of product design, developement and use. When I referred to the product above on this very forum it wasn’t received well, by some. So I have spent the last many months, as did the club mentioned in the recent issue of MR, doing double blind studies, comparing Alchol, Goo Gone ( which I have used extensively), various track cleaners, etc.
Experimenting every week, every two weeks, different product at various areas of the layout; I have plenty of room, believe me; as they did in the article. I even used the transmission fluid straight out of the bottle, placed some on both tracks without cleaning anything and the engines not only began running better with the improved electrical contact but the track tracked better for other engines as well.
I noticed that the club that did similar testing and experiments in MR had the same results. So, if the leading model railroad magazine in the world accepts an article that I believed was based on study and experimentation then that’s good enough for me, for I too have done similar studies and it works.
At first, I thought it was a “April Fool’s” , sure many have used ATF in place of Labelle and other lube. For years many have sworn by Clipper oil and Rail Zip. ATF must work the same, never have tried it. At first, when heard this, then saw the MR article, I immediatly thought that even if electrical PU was improved, that oil spread on the railhead would gum up and also cause loss of traction or cause all that existing crud on rolling stock to get tracked all over. Well according to recent tests and results I may be wrong. We have an extensive club layout and keeping all that track clean is a never ending chore. It is a real problem during shows and open houses when countless trains are constantly running for 2 days. Gives some real food for thought and I bet it will be a main item to be addressed at our next meeting.
I would like to hear from others as to their findings. Are there actually some miracle to keep those tracks clean?
Our model RR Club used the ATF/Clipper Oil/WD40/etc/etc for years!
We NEVER vacuumed the track just put the oil on the tracks and ran the trains thru it - and IT WORKED !
BUT !
The car wheels picked up all of the dirt and we finally had to clean the car wheels.
ON my HOME Layout - I used the Metal Polish as shown in Model Railroader magazine a number of years ago!
Once the track was done - I did NOT have to clean the rails again for over 5 YEARS - YES ! 5 YEARS!
The only reason it did not last longer - I had to tear down part of the layout and added another room - the construction crew used cement saws to cut through the block walls and the dust went ALL OVER the layout!
I even had plastic up covering the layout but the DUST still went everywhere !
So I went over the layout and vacuumed it and reapplied the METAL POLISH !
I finally have gotten the layout back to what it was before the New Room.
So I will see how long this time it takes until I have to clean the track again!
While the oils worked well - the crud buildup on the car wheels was unacceptable.
With the METAL POLISH being a dry protection there is no build up of CRUD and NO LOSS of Traction.
As far as ATF conducting electricity I can not believe. I have been a heavy equipment and big truck mechanic for 37 years and have used thousands of gallons of ATF. The heavy duty transmissions in our haul trucks all use ATF and they have sensors and solenoids that are immersed in the ATF. It it is a conductor of electricity then none of those sensors and solenoids would work and they would all be shorted.
ATF has a very high detergent additive in it. This is what gives it the cleanliness and properties you are seeing. But then the high detergent package is somewhat offset with anti foaming packages. If you remove all the additives in ATF you will end up with a base stock of 10 weight motor oil or more like an ISO 32 hydraulic oil. ATF also used to come in different properties. For transmissions with harsh up shift and down shift Mercon II was recommended. For trucks subjected to hard up hill loading then Type F was recommended. Type F was a harder fluid then Mercon/ Dextron. At 210 degrees type F held its viscosity better and did not break down as fast. I would not recommend Type F on your tracks. One of the additive packages has a very high Sulfer content that is corrosive when exposed to air.
You would probably see the same results with hot soapy water. The high detergent content in ATF comes in handy for cleaning the sludge out of an engine crank case after a head gasket or cylinder liner failure. Oil does mix with water in failures like that. It looks like thick Grey paint.
I do use ATF on my steamers side rods though. My track gets cleaned with 70% isopropal.
To each his own. Even with the recent article in MR about the use and so-called “advantages” of ATF, I have absolutely no interest in trying it. The results I get with 91% alcohol are just fine and it evaporates quickly - leaving little to no residue behind.
Bottom line: Oil attracts dirt and that creates a mess. I see the maintenance involved in using ATF far more work than the advantages outlined in the article. [N]
Although an old thread I thought I would add some more. After almost 2 years the synthetic ATF we are using is working great. I doubted it at first, but am happy to report good results. When it quits working so well we will likely clean, gleam and then reapply ATF.
My theory is the thicker the oil, the more dirt your wheels pick up. However, to get the most performance electrical wise, the metal rails need some type of wetting. (No, water won’t work here.)
Most metals have some type of protective oil coating on them. When you clean your track, this removes the protective wetting coat and causes the metal to be dry, which is a bad thing for electrical conductivity. Thus my favorite product is WD- 40 or CRC 3-36 for increasing the electrical conductivity of the track.
Since I don’t EVER clean my track now - for real - and my trains run without stuttering and withotu sound cutouts and without headlight flickers - I would NEVER put ANYTHING ont he rails that leaves a film or layer of anything behind. All the dust in the air will simply start sticking to the film and then the wheels of the cars and locos and in the end I cna only imagine this makign things even worse.
Even on the club layout - we end up cleaning the track every other day usually when at extended shows, but the cleaning train has a CMX car and another one running behind with a dry wipe. The CMX car is loaded with laquer thinner - no, it does nto eat the plastic ties because the adjustment screw it set to only keep the pad moist, not soakign wet. This loosens any crud that builds up and the car behind with the dry pad wipes and dries the rails - if you touch the track right behind the cleanign train, you don;t get laquer thinner all over your fingers. This has generally proved to be highly effective in keepign the layotu running. The only power dropout issues are unrelated to dirty track and are mostly the fitter sections between modules and the rail joiners being loose.
I agree. I think almost everyone will agree that there is dirt that will collect. I think most will agree that dirt will collect easier on a flat surface. To me that means the rails rather than the wheels, assuming that the train is standing still. So we put whatever solution on the rails and the dirt collects there.
What has not been explained to my satisfaction is where does the dirt go. If it is no longer on the rails, does it just conveniently jump to the side into the ballast? Does the solution eat the dirt?
Amen to that. Now as far as ATF being electrically conductive? Forget it. It’s not. Neither is 91% alcohol, goo-gone or brake fluid. My acrylic paint is very conductive. That doesn’t mean I want to try cleaning my track with it. The only thing I can see happening is the locos wheels pushing through the film left by the ATF and contacting a corrosion free conductive surface.
However, in my case where I use WD-40 or CRC 3-36, I also run John Allen’s Masonite Pad wipers in my trains that tend to wipe up the thin coating, just leaving a microscopic coating that enhances the electrical pick up but not enough of a coating to attract dust.
Isn’t it funny how so many of us can swear by one method that is derided by others who claim it took them forever to undo the damage that method did on their layouts?
On a whim, since I was soon going to be decommissioning my layout in a few weeks anyway, I dropped maybe 30 or 40 drops, quite a few, of ATF all over my rail system near Christmas. I immediately ran a train all over the rail system to ensure even distribution.
Last week I busted up all the hard ground goop on the entrance module to that layout. Dust everywhere. Cleaned it up, and then I cut out a chunk of the surface of the yard module to recover the roundhouse and turntable so that I can use it on my new layout. Dust everywhere. Haven’t gotten around to vacuuming just yet.
So, Just three minutes ago, again on a whim, I went over the the pretty-sad-looking remnant of a layout and swiped my index finger over the mains in two places. All that came up off the rails was the usual grey smudge that anyone would get who hadn’t cleaned his rails in a donkey’s age. And it was very slight. So, this after ATF was run all over the rails about four months ago, after quite a bit of dust-raising demo, and all I got was a slight greyish streak on my finger. I’ll bet any one of you could go over to his layout, whose rails were cleaned last weekend, and you’d see the very same severity of oxidation and crud come up on your finger.
Oh, and like so many of you, I just don’t seem to have a need to clean my rails. I can, and have, let my layout go unused for a couple of months, fire up the Digitrax SEB, and away they go.
Nice of you to play guinea pig and test it out. I think I’m still goign to leave my layotu alone - don’t fix what ain’t broke, as they say.
Part of the issue, I bet, between some people using a method and havign it work great and others trying the same thing is in just how much goop gets applied. Like the coupel of recent threads on how to remove glued/caulked track. I’ve never had a problem makign a change after the fact, but use too much adhesive and you have exactly the situation that makes others swear they will NEVER glue track. Likewise with ‘cleaners’ on the rail like ATF. A tiny amount, thoroughly spread over the entire layout, with no glops of it anywhere, probably doesn’t hurt anything. Maybe it helps. Also, there are multiple types of automatic transmission fluid, and they ARE chemically different. So maybe DEXRON works and MERCON doesn’t, or maybe only ATF+4 works.