What type of liquid can you soak ho track into, that will remove the oxide/rust especially for hard to reach places, like the side of the track, and not melt the rubber ties?
is the track brass or nickel silver? you might want to use a bright boy if you have one for the top’s of the rail’s.has the track been painted ? are the tie’s plastic or fiber…(rubber? ) let’s us have a little more info.terry…
Not sure what kind of track you are talking about. Most HO sectional track has plastic ties, and N/S, Brass, or Steel rail. If you have the steel rail or brass stuff, I would just throw it away and start over. It is just not worth the effort. If you have N/S trackage, I would clean the track with a ‘Brite Boy’ track cleaner(sort of an ink eraser like thing). You can tell steel rail by the ‘rust’: Tyco made a sort of steel ‘tubular’ rail track years ago, and Life-Like and Bachmann both have a roadbed/track system that has black roadbed and solid steel rail. There really is no easy ‘soak it’ system that I am aware of - ‘elbow grease’ seems to work best for the initial clean-up.
Jim Bernier
The track is Atlas code 100 and the ties are rubber.
Take some advice from a 40+ year veteran of model railroading. Throw it away and get new track. Trying to clean rusted steel track is not worth the effort, the rust will almost always return within a couple of months. Brass track is not worth keeping, period. There are people however who collect it. I set it out by the curb on Tuesday morning and they come round and collect it along with the trash.
Atlas track is either brass or N/S. Atlas sectional track has ‘plastic ties’. Their old 3’ flex track had ‘fiber’ ties. I am not aware of ‘rubber’ ties. If it is Atlas(marked on the bottom of the ties), and has a silver color, then it is N/S and might be worth cleaning up. If the ties are so soft that they seem to be ‘rubber’, I suspect they have already been soaked with some kind of lacquer thinner or paint stripper and will be a lost cause…
Jim
Ditto, Ditto, and Ditto!
Just one question: Suppose you somehow get it cleaned up, installed, wired, and ballasted. Then in six months or so when it starts to rust again (the question is when, not if), what are you going to do?
The only answer to that is pull it up,scrape up the ballast and roadbed and do that section over.
As you said, it’s not a question of if, but when, because if it rusted once, it WILL rust again, in only 2 to 5 months. Been there, done that, seen the results. It ain’t pretty.