Buckeye, I think what the guy who gave the tip on Lionel’s website might have really meant was a spray oil like WD40. Just guessing, but a little more than a year ago, I was running the trains and they were stalling a lot. Upon close inspection of the 027 track, I noticed some surface rust or corriosion slowly building on some sections.
So I removed all trains and wiped down the track with a cloth with some WD40 sprayed on it. I let that set overnight, then I used a Scothbrite pad, and then wiped down the track completely. Problem solved. I do now perioduically use the same procedure just to help prevent the problem from coming back.
I would gander this isn’t great for rubber traction tires, but I won’t run a loco with them for a few days after this procedure. A good many of my locos have their traction tires removed completely, as I have added some weight and they seem to run just fine.
After Christmas I store my tubular track in a cardboard box. First I put newspaper in the bottom, then stack all the track in the box and spray the whole thing with WD-40. I put newspaper on top of the track, close the box and put on a shelf in the basement. I’ve done this for several years now and the track still looks like new.
A friend of mine used clipper oil on his LGB track. Before that he had the track absolutely clean of anything and the trains did not run as good. He was told by someone to try clipper oil and it worked. Don’t know if this is something that all LGB people do or not. In O gauge, I use denatured alcohol and Scotch Brite pads. I had been using a cleaner/degreaser product in spray cans called Pre Solve that I got at the hardware store but they don’t carry it now. It worked better than the alcohol though. I have’nt tried Goo Gone yet but that sounds like it might be good.
From the Wiki folks…but I hope Bob Nelson came translate this into useful prose! [8D]
Some practical dielectrics
Dielectric materials can be solids, liquids, or gases. In addition, a high vacuum can also be a useful, lossless dielectric even though its relative dielectric constant is only unity.
Solid dielectrics are perhaps the most commonly used dielectrics in electrical engineering, and many solids are very good insulators. Some examples include porcelain, glass, and most plastics. Air, nitrogen and sulfur hexafluoride are the three most commonly used gaseous dielectrics.
Industrial coatings such as parylene provide a dielectric barrier between the substrate and its environment.
You missed the best answer, the first sentence in the Wikipedia article! “A dielectric is a nonconducting substance, i.e.[,] an insulator.”
For the inquiring minds that want to know, insulators generally have a property called permittivity, whereby the charges on the atoms (electrons and protons) separate slightly (but do not flow as in a conductor) in response to an electric field. The electrons shift toward the more positive surface and the protons toward the more negative surface of the dielectric. This produces a thin film of charge on each side which cancels part of the original electric field, so more charge is needed to maintain a particular voltage across an insulator. The ratio of charge needed compared to a vacuum is called the “dielectric constant” of the insulator. Capacitors are made of metal plates (foil) separated by insulators with a high dielectric constant, so that they will hold more charge for any particular voltage.
Quite so, Bob, and marxalot. I expected to see several examples of the once-typical answer that one found on forums, namely that it was a “conductor,” which is dead wrong, of course. Perhaps you are making a bit of technical progress here. Keep up the good work.
In this context, then, Chuck’s (from Plymouth) suggestion contains a certain logic, but others will have to figure out whether that is actually what happens when the rollers meet the rails.