A little over 2 years ago, I GLEAM’d all of the track on a 12x6 ft peninsula. A few months later I decided to tear down and rebuild my entire layout, except for the peninsula described above. Now my layout is almost fully rebuilt, but the peninsula track has accumulated 2 years worth of ambient dust from all the surrounding construction work.
The track obviously needs to be cleaned, but I don’t want to use anything highly abrasive; I also want to avoid anything that leaves a residue that might interfere with electrical contact. Can anybody recommend a solution available at Home Depot, Lowes or Ace Hardware stores that I can wipe my track with? I’m hoping to find something that doesn’t have to be ordered online so I can get started this evening.
I would use a shop vac with a soft brush to get the big stuff off and to clean the tracks I would use a bit of alcohol (rubbing type save the other type for your belly) and and a cotton rag like a tee shirt get the residue off first, once that is done then polish the rails with a bright boy or green scotch bright pad. All should be fine after that.
That would’ve been my first choice, but my wife handed me a full bottle of 70% stuff - so I went ahead and used that. Seemed to work fine. Some areas were dirtier than others, a lot of track sections still felt mirror-smooth as I wiped them down.
I suppose the real test will come tomorrow, when I get a chance to test-run a switcher over every inch of this track.
Lots of good ideas here and they all work. In building my current HO layout, I used a lot of track from the previous one which was put in place in the early '90s. Most all had ballast attached, so I started with a wire brush to remove what I could. As this used track was going to be reused as yard and siding trackage, it didn’t have to be perfectly free of the old ballast.
After that, I did the finger in the cloth in the alcohol trick, and rubbed down the rail heads. The object was to get to the point where the rag did not get dirty during this process. There were some spots that would not rub off, and I lightly used a bright boy to attack that. Then, I hit it with the alcohol rag again until it was smooth and clean.
This process works - but it isn’t fast and it does cause one to “change fingers” - but it works.
Ken, since the track is already gleamed, I would just use a vacuum cleaner over it first, then wipe the rails with a dry T-shirt rag. No fluids and no bright-boy. You do not want to un-do the gleaming work that you already did.
I use “Goo Gone” rather than alcohol…somewhere along the line someone told me alcohol wasn’t good to use but not sure now why - maybe it caused sparking or something. Anyway, it never hurts to invest in a track cleaning car and run it once in a while. It’s easier than hand cleaning. [;)]
I see this thread is still going - here’s an update:
I simply wiped every inch of the track using a cotton flannel rag soaked with 70% alcohol - nothing more. And when I test-ran a P2K SW-9 over it, it ran every bit as smoothly as it did 2 years ago. Looks like the GLEAM benefits are for real! [8-|]