No Silver Bullet

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Kit building, kit bashing, scratch building - I have done a lot of work on my layout. I take pictures and get down close to look at it. I’m proud of the results the countless hours (and dollars) have yielded.

Then, the reason I built this - to run my trains and experience the joy of problem solving - to move cars from industry to industry. So, I fire up the DCC and edge a locomotive into gear, only to watch it sputter and stutter. Instead of transporting loads, I am transported from proud modeler to frustrated sap.

Dirty rails and dirty wheels, I have come to understand are the culprit. So, I clean them and run the trains for a session. Then, they start acting up again. Dirty, again. It seems I need to spend more time cleaning my rails than running my trains.

…kind of takes the fun out of it.

I did some research and found discussions on the “silver bullet” - ATF on the rails. While counter-intuitive, it seemed like this method of conductivity was just what I was looking for, and it was vouched for by several folks. So, I added ATF to my rails and the trains ran incredibly smooth…

…for about 10 minutes.

Feeling like a sap (again), I ended up cleaning all of the ATF off the rails, the locomotives, and the rolling stock - about 40 pieces total. The grime, dirt, and mysterious black stuff was everywhere, like gum on the bottom of my shoe.

Recently I painted the rails on the west side of my layout. As we know, paint gets on the rail heads and needs to be cleaned off. So, I got my cleaning gear out. I Bright Boyed until my m

2

Interesting. Thanks for the alert/warning. I am certainly hesitant on smearing “stuff” on my rails.

I built my rather extensive test track about 15 years ago. In all that time, I’ve only occasionally wiped the rails with a paper towel.

I do wonder at the use of an abrasive (brightboy) on the rail tops. That seems to imply a coating of corrosion. To clean paint off the railtops and edges, I would recommend Q-tips and an appropriate solvent. Or careful use of paper towels and same.

I’ll add that some people blame gooey-guck on using plastic wheels. I don’t use them. Much.

Also, don’t forget that after you clean your track, all the gooey-guck that’s on your wheels will re-coat it.

Ed

3

The Bright Boy was just to get the paint off the rails. I learned awhile ago that it doesn’t acually clean anything. The mystery gunk I got off the rails was ATF mixed in with God knows what.

Now, that the rails and wheels have been super-cleaned, it only takes a little to keep them that way.

4

Thing is, using the brightboy ONCE, vigorously, puts scratches in the railhead. It really does, 'cause I’ve got “micro-pictures” of it. There are people who say that the scratches “encourage” gooey-guck deposition.

However.

There are people who brightboy all the time and survive.

However.

It’s very difficult to un-scratch. So, on the chance that the scratches will be a problem, I don’t own a brightboy. No temptation.

Ed

5

Does your rolling stock have plastic wheels? They can be a source of black gunk.

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I think one needs to view the conductivity issue as a system or process with multiple factors, as you point out.

In my case I implemented track gleaming w/polishing, an effort but my layout size is modest. And I run masonite pad track cleaner cars in my freights. My freight cars have metal wheels. I run my CMX car with denatured alcohol at the first sign of a DCC loco sound hiccup, around 3-4 months. And I clean the powered loco wheels occasionally by spinning on the track with an alcohol wet towel. No one of these factors would give me the overall result.

7

I have stared switching out from plastic to metal. Originally it was to add weight to the cars. Now, I will not be putting the cars back on until the steel is in place.

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Can you elaborate on this a little?

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I’m not peahrens, but a club I used to belong to had a cleaning car they regularly sent around the layout. It had a block of polished agate (or some other stone) that rested on its own weight in the open bottom of a depressed center flat car. It polished or burnished or gleamed the railheads. Did a pretty good job with little or no real effort.

Once, a member brought his train from home where he used the greasy slimy ATF system. The residual on his loco slung goo all over the club layout. He was thoroughly chastised, and promised to go forth and sin no more.

Robert

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Sorry about the name, I believe it was auto inserted. I must have goofed.

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You didn’t goof. I was just chiming in on peahrens’ comment.

Robert

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Ed,A myth based on a guy writing article in MR and he had to use a microscope to see the so called scratches that may have been there from the start since he didn’t mention before/after the use of a bright boy.

As far as we know those scratches may have been from production.

I’ve used a bright boy for 60 years with no issues and the last time I clean track before ripping up my ISL around six weeks ago was last November.

13

I’ll jump in to elaborate. Gleaming is a process of removing the scratches from the railheads, then burnishing them smooth so they don’t collect dirt.

Start by sanding the railheads with 400 grit waterproof/emery paper wapped around a block, wipe with papertowel and alcohol. Repeat step with 600 grit paper. Then buff with a stainless steel washer large enough to span both rails (a fender washer, available at big box stores, is ideal), if you hear or feel a grinding, repeat the alcohol wipe. I “Goo’d” a plastic bar on one side of the washer to serve as a handle. Some use a spoon.

Using stainless steel is important as it is much harder than the nickel silver rail so it smears/burnishes the railhead to a mirror finish. Some then apply a metal polish, but it isn’t required. Although some claim its a once-and-done process, in my experience, any other cleaning is minimal, such as dusting after a round of layout construction.

Once gleamed, don’t use a Brite Boy or other abrasive on the track or you’ll put the scratches back in the rail and you’ve undone all your work.

A recent poster on this general topic suggested using fret paper (available from music stores) instead of the grit papers. I haven’t tried these but it sounds like an ultra-fine grit, so it might be worth a look.

Although I haven’t found gleaming to be the end-all magic bullet, it is certainly the best method I’ve come across, as it greatly reduces track cleaning chores to a quick wipe down every few months.

Jim

14

Perhaps someone can pull up one of the older threads on gleaming. I’m on my back today with only the phone so can’t do a good pc search.

The gleaming process is based on minimizing the micro scratches on the rail surface. The scratches are a good place for poor contact and dirt and gunk accumulation.

The first steps with gleaming are to use a block with two grades of sandpaper, maybe 400 and 800? Maybe wet/dry? Then use a stainless steel washer about size of 50 cent piece and rub the rails vigorously with much pressure. The harder stainless burnishes the softer rail, minimizing scratches in number and depth. Then polish the railtops. I used Simichrome. And then do not ever use abrasives to clean the rail as that will take you backwards.

Hope someone can post the older more thorough description.

15

One could view exclusive use of machined metal wheels as an automatic gleaming system. As long as the wheel material is harder and more dense than the railhead, why wouldn’t it work?

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Because the wheels don’t slide on the rails, they roll on them.

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I’m with Paul, except I don’t use a CMX or similar car. Last gleamed my track in 2006, and just this last January I did it again, there were a few spots that were beginning to cause problems so I just redid the whole layout, about 350’ of track. In fairness I have used 90% alcohol, and a cloth to remove whatever from my little used sidings, but the mainlines have performed well over the years. My layout is in a garage in mid Florida but I do have climate control. Big fan of gleaming

18

It may or may not cause burnishing, from what I read on Wiki about the effect. It depends on the relative hardness of the two metals as well as the force involved, mainly car weight for our case.

If the force is slight, the two metals may deform a bit but simply rebound when the force is removed. If the force is great enough and the one metal sufficiently more hard, then the softer metal can be burnished, kinda like plastic flowing, changing its surface to a smoother one.

At least that’s how I understand it.

19

I believe that our rails undulate more than we think they do, and transversely they are often at disparate heights…across from each other at any one point. Also, not all wheel sets are made the same, whether in material or tire cone geometry. Also, not all rail stock is extruded through the same dies.

The result is that we have many variations on contact area from place-to-place along our rail systems. We don’t apply the same pressures or even the same techniques from place-to-place on our own rail systems when we use whichever method we currently think/hope will be our Magic Bullet…the Big Eureka!

Gleaming offers about the best and most consistent application for cleaning whichever rail stock any one of us happens to lay for our trains. Running a steel 1.5" diameter washer, scrubbing back and forth along the rails, and then moving along to another spot needing the same treatment (not unlike painting with a roller or a brush), should eventually make all the rails roughly the same surface geometry (but it will do almost nothing for transverse height disparities, or improper/inappropriate super-elevation, for example).

In the prototype, the contact area on each wheel is very small, and generally toward the inside of the rail head. Because the profile of most wheel sets are truncated cones in reality, our exceedingly tiny contact areas are that much more likely to be missing from place-to-place along our rail systems. That is why roadbed prep is so important in the smaller scales. Transitions in elevation must be gradual, and the roadbed can’t undulate or have transverse irregularities because those will be translated through the ties and u

20

While I did not expect all of this information, there is some good stuff here.

Metal wheels and gleaming. Both make perfect since…

…and seem less like silver bullets. :slight_smile: