Hi everybody, and let me thank you all in advance for any advice you can give me here! first off my name is chuck and like a lot of you i started off in this hobby with a Tyco HO AT&SF red warbonnet freight set on a sheet of plywood when i was 14, well because of numerous things(hormones, girls, lack of modeling ability, girls) i lost interest, fast forward about 26 years and for some crazy reason i thought it would be fun to have a train run through our( my wife heather and my) ceramic christmas village, well after drawing up a track plan that would only work if the laws of physics where repealed and realizing that the cats would derail it all the time if i put it where it needs to be, and some trips to the LHS’s i ended up deciding that because of space limits( we live in a condo) that N-scale would be just the thing, so now i have a 3 1/2 ft by 6 1/2 ft layout in the living room ( yes she is wonderful!!!) with 2 ovals of seperate track and a half oval for our pickles to get from the factory to the dock, i use bachmann e-z track in nickle silver, a mix of bachmann and model power locos(both steam and diesels) and a mix of rolling stock, mostly atlas bachmann and micro trains, also i have a dust/cat hair/cat feet protective folding plywood cover for it that other then the dust and cat hair works pretty good! so now the ?'s, i like to run continuos operations, i.e i start the trains and let them go for a while( 1/2 hour 45 min.) then stop them to rest, run them again. i do this most evenings, i usually very the speeds they run, and i am not a lead foot on the throttle and am noticing that i am having to clean the track and wheels more oftern lately ( which i was lead to believe was not as much an issue with the nickle silver as with steel and brass) and have read that whals clipper oil is a miricle in a bottle that will make all that go away, but i have read several different theories as to how to apply it, any thing from a drop every foot rubbed out in both directions to a drop in s
You want to check the locos wheels as well as the track. For cleaning the track, I use Goo Gone and a rag.
For your Warbonnet, put a little of the Goo Gone on a rag. Put the front wheels on the track and the rear wheels on the wet rag. Run the engine in forward and reverse holding the engine in place. Flip the train around and run the engine with the front wheels on the rag and the rear wheels on the track.
There are more elaborate methods out there, but this will get you moving.
Nice to see you here!
Track cleaning is, as you say, oft debated on this and other forums (fora?). Some use solvent carrying cars towed behind a locomotive, home-made box cars modified with masonite dragging over the tracks to polish them, some use a rag with Goof-Off, Goo Gone, Wahl’s, acetone, paint thinner, and more recently there is a camp that swears by using metal wheel polish…Mother’s Mag Wheel Polish, Black Diamond, and such. Whichever way you go, less of the stuff is more, if you follow. Don’t want it running down the sides of your nicely weathered rails and ballast.
Using your ability to glean information and your intuition, the ideal method leaves metal surfaces with no residue or film, even if it is purported to be a “protective” film. This is because you want, above all else, good electrical transmission…which don’t happen thru oil films and waxes. That means you will have to clean regularly since oxidation continues apace.
Keeping track clean, according to a pretty hefty population here, is abetted by getting rid of any plastic wheelsets on your rolling stock. The metal to metal contact on the rails using metal wheels seems to have a healthy degree of support and affirmation here. FWIW, I have found the most crud on my plastic wheels.
Thanks space mouse and selector for your thoughts here, and i do use metal wheels on my rolling stock, have heard that it helps, plus the sound is better to my ears, and i had heard that the oxidation on the nickle silver was supposed to be conductive, ie. did not need to be cleaned as much if at all, so i guess that was some bad advice there, and so you are saying the whals is not so good as far as track electrical conductivity goes?, thanks again all.
Any track needs to be cleaned as do the wheels on the loco and rolling stock. However, when NS track oxidizes, it conducts electricity better than brass does when it oxidizes. A big old pile of sludge will block conductivity on both NS and brass track.
If all there is is oxidation, then there should not be much of a problem…that seems to be the consensus, but it is not universal. What is problematic is organic compounds that build up…oversprays of paints, solvents, glues. Arcing when the wheels cross gaps or bridge up to slightly higher rails where the joins are a bit uneven, crossing frogs and points in turnouts…all these places show a brown goop building up on the rails, sometimes blackish. All the good oxidation in the world under this non-transmitting layer won’t work. So, you were not fed duff gen, but as is often the case, there’s quite a bit more to the game than just dealing the cards.
You sound like a fella that’s pretty much on top of things, so that is near 90% of what will ultimately free you. Seeking advice, experimentation, these things often yield success.
Remember that in many turnouts, the power is routed only when the point rail lies flush with its adjacent stock rail…there must be hard contact, and clean contact. Most of us, at least twice a year, run something between the points and the stock rail to remove any non-conductive material from the mating surfaces. In fact, most guys eventually resort to soldering jumper wires between the two so that there is positive power fed all the time…no guessing, no relying on the points contacting the stock rails cleanly. If there is no power getting up to the frog and beyond as a result of faults like this, then the track beyond the frog, if it is a stub end and powered via the turnout, will be dead track. So, dirty track and wheels may not really be the culprit all the time. Sometimes it is broken solders on power feeds to the rails, faulty metal joiner contact, and so on.
Well i thank you for the on top of things comment selector, am not sure about all that but … any way so you are saying that the oxy is good, or at least not harmful, but that the crud is bad, which makes sense to me, and we do have more then our share of dust and hair around here, we have four cats, and as i said in earlier post i do have a cover, but it does not do the job totally, my lovely bride is going to make a cloth dust cover for me so that should help a lot, as for the switches well i have to confess here that i gave up on them a while ago, like i said before i use bmann e-z track and am not sure if it is that or me or what but i could never get it to work all the time, i got tired and yes i must say frustrated in being able to only run some of the trains over it some of the time, some of the trains all the time and some none of the time, i checked them at the points i read about that cause trouble and could not see any thing wrong with them, any opinion on e-z track? and also on the whole life like bevbel versus bmann diesels?, all my steamers are bmann and i have no trouble there, but the diesels i have of theirs sure do seem kinda growly to me, while the LL/bevbels are nice and quiet, your thoughts?
I had HO scale EZ track and I estimate that it took me about 45 minutes to make each turnout work right. I had to file down the points so that they fit in against the rails. I had to file the top and sides of the joints with the adjoining track. Sometimes I had to file the the frogs because the plastic was too high.
You just have to work them. I always work with them until my worst engine runs through smoothly.
Of course, there is the possibility that the engines wheels are out of gauge. An NMRA gauge is really handy for locating the source of the problem.
Between Space Mouse and me, we could write a book about EZ-Track, with about three chapters on tuning their turnouts.
To be truthful, my experience with the longer #5 EZ-Track turnout was quite positive. Electrically, they were very reliable, but mostly they let me use the longer steamers that I acquired soon after I got underway. That said, I didn’t get many cycles of switching on them over the short year that I used them…I’m pretty sure I spend less time operating my trains than many modelers, so I can’t say they are reliable for years. What I can tell you, and Space Mouse will agree (I know this 'cuz he’s done it before) that getting the points to lie cleanly against their stock rails, and sharpening them so that the wheel flanges don’t pick them and jumping the tracks, can be a pain where the sun don’t shine. Additionally, they pivot partway along their length, right, and those pivots are not sanctioned by NASA, if you catch my drift. They may work just fine for 6 months, and then suddenly you have a flopper. I have picked up fresh packages from the store shelf and found one point flopping around. [:O]
EZ-Track is generally good stuff. It stands up well to repeated attempts to find the dream layout configuration. What it doesn’t do, and this is its chief limitation, is to let you try your own configuration in an endless variety of ways. Flextrack allows this because you can alter a curve here or there to get your loop to close, but you must use a limited series of combinations with the sectional track, or snap track, if you want your two rails to meet when it’s all over. To be fair, Bachmann has recently increased their selection of curves, now running up to over 34" if I have that correct…a big help. Still, though, they are fixed in radius, so will always hinder free flow.
Lastly, before I get this tome published [:I]
To add to what selector just said, I ended up going with flex track on grades. Worked out a lot smoother.
Hmmm…it seems to me that you have asked some really good questions. That is what makes this forum what it is - a place to get answers to the questions we all have sooner or later. Regarding the cleaning of wheels: 1) I run only metal wheelsets because plastic wheels seem to pick up gunk much faster than metal (has to do with static imbalance). 2) I use a citrus-based cleaner called De-Solv-it (available from WalMart) which I spray on a used dryer sheet. I then run each set of locomotive wheels over the wet dryer sheet and voila…clean wheels! As far as the track, I am a firm believer in the KISS principal: put nothing on the rails and they can’t attract anything. It works as simply as it sounds. Once or twice a year I run a Bright Boy around the layout (which is of the folding variety and in an unheated/unairconditioned garage) to remove any trace of glop. The best way to lower track maintanence is to begin with clean track and wheels and RUN THE TRAINS FREQUENTLY!! Seriously, I only have to “Bright Boy” the track once or twice a year and only clean wheels infrequently (OK…locomotive wheels 3x a year). Dust? I’ve got plenty and it doesn’t stop or slow down operations. I hope this helps. Oh, anyone with four cats in their home is truly blessed. “Dogs come when called. Cats take a message and get back to you.” [We have 3 feline overseers]
So you are running the trains often.
I am beginning to believe that is the biggest urban legend of model railroading.
That was a widely accepted theory about 20 years ago.
My thought is - don’t do it. Do a search on this form for “track cleaning” or “clean track”. I’ve tried every method and so far haven’t liked any of them. Our club switched to metal wheels - didn’t help. We put in a drop ceiling - didn’t help. Sealed the concrete floor & walls - didn’t help. We added air-conditioning - didnt’ help. We’ve tried the whal-clipper oil, LPS-1, and other various conductivity agents - nothing special with any of them except eventually the conductivity agent dries out and leaves gum on the rails which attracts MORE dirt. We’ve cleaned with alchohol, ammonia, acetone, special track cleaning fluids, etc. None kept the track clean longer than any other. The only thing we did determine was that bright-boys are definitely out and banned from the layout. They scratch the rail head and make it get dirty quicker. It takes a lot of work to polish them back out. Running the trains often doesn’t seem to make any difference either. Bottom line is that we always clean (wipe the rails) right before an important operating system.
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i have noticed that the model power/bevbel diesels seem to run a little smoother and much quieter then the b
Well first off let me thank you all for the welcome to the forum and the info, and to correct a mistake from my first post, i said model power bevbel when what i meant was lifelike/bevbel, just got three more yesterday and ran them and well like i said they are just so nice and smooth and quiet compared to the bmann diesels, i got a bmann spectrum a-b set in south pacific black widow and it has great pulling power, runs smooth, but it is to me some what noisy, and i have run it for enough hours that it should not be a break in issue, also got an ER models baldwin RF-16 sharknose a-b set in NYC, now i guess this is supposed to be bmann? made or owned? or some thing and it is again a good puller, smooth runner but it kinda sounds like a little leaf blower to us, now i was running 2 of my new LL/bevbel locos last night, 2 gp-38’s as an a-a set and i mean right now out of the box they where so quiet all you could hear was the sweet whisper of metal on metal, and the thing i dont understand is that all the steam engines i own are bmann and other then a couple of old ones i picked up on ebay and one little 4-4-0 that came with a set they are to me very quiet, i have a spectrum 2-8-0 consolidation that is very nice to run, as well as a northern 4-8-4 thats fairly quiet, and i thought it was easier to make a good diesel then a steamer, or is that a mistake on my part? now as to the cats yes they are great, and as i vacume off my layout every 2-3 weeks i keep telling myself that! i also think alot about those hairless cats you see some times and i wonder… oh well gota love em!, and yes i do run the trains often, usually every night for at least 3 hrs or so, and i run them continous, i do not have enough space as yet to make operation type running feasible, so i run them around and around their little ovals and thats what i like, other then the little back and forth pickle line, which reminds me do any of you know about automated running, all i see out there is stuff with very limited stop times, like 3-5 mins. is th