The hobby's dirty little secret -- layout maintenance!

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

One topic that I don’t think is discussed enough in the hobby is layout maintenance.

I’ve been running an operational layout now for about 8 years, and holding monthly op sessions (with a few breaks for the holidays and summer vacation).

I have needed to take the layout down this season and do serious maintenance. I’ve been discussing my thoughts and experiences around layout maintenance in a topic thread over on my Siskiyou Line website:

http://siskiyou-railfan.net/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?1110.0


(click to enlarge)

Layout maintenance is one of those topics that people don’t like to talk about about, because if you have a reality attack in this area, you may not want to build a larger layout. Hobby vendors, I believe, would prefer people forget about that part!

But if you ever dream of having a large layout someday, and it’s more than just a pipe-dream – you need to think about this. [swg]

2

Maintenance? What maintenance? [%-)]

This is why I like a semi-modular design… I can unplug the bits and turn them on edge or upside down to work on wiring and/or point motors in comfort… certainly beats working upside down on a fixed layout… and thye odd bump knocks the dust and loose bits off - just need to remove all the locos before moving [:O]

3

Even a small layout needs plenty of maintenance. On my previous 36"x80" layout, I had on several occasions to remove sections of track (turnouts gone bad or damaged track), re-solder wires, etc. Even the scenery needs a once-over from time to time. I’ve noticed how the ground foam in my trees tends to attract dust!

My layout was (and current one is) portable, and I took it to shows. I always brought a repair kit consisting of extra wire, soldering supplys, wire cutters, glue, needle-nosed pliers, hobby knofe, and others just in case. I did have a section of track go dead once just before the show and I had to fiddle with the feeders, but it ended up working in time.

4

Stacks of Metal wheels, Graphite, Lube oil, #9 lead shot, Kaydee Couplers and some brite boy for the rails.

I cheat a little bit by using sectional rails for now. More pernament construction is in the future.

The engines ask for a little TLC several times a year regardless of how much or how little they run. Heavy repairs go back to the Factory.

Sometimes I think the rolling stock wants a great deal of work for the mileage they get, except for Atlas RTR units.

I dont use very many tools as yet, the NMRA Gauge is the most important followed by the Kaydee coupler tester.

5

This is why my last layout failed. It was too much for me to build and maintain on my own, and the fact that it had very steep grades. [:slight_smile:]

6

Try 600 grit sandpaper instead of a briteboy for cleaning the rails. I was surprised at how good it was.

It’s joined my armory of track cleaning products, right next to the Maas.

7

Maas? The Metal Polish?

8

That’s the stuff! Don’t use very much (a little goes a long ways) and clean it up thoroughly.

9

I guess I’m one of the lucky ones, but I’ve had very little maintenance issues on my MA&G. So far, my 14 x 32 layout has over 50 turnouts and none have given any trouble whatsoever in over 5 years! I think this is more a testimony to the durability and quality of Atlas Code 83 track than anything. I run the layout often, and include a good quality track cleaning car in most consists. Only during rare prolonged periods of inactivity do I need to resort to a Brite Boy. Another factor that helps with clean rails is having metal wheels on all 500+ cars that I have. Even the wheelsets have never needed cleaning in all that time. Locomotive wheels get cleaned periodically, but nothing major.

The only pain in the neck I have to deal with is cleaning the 30 staging tracks. Because they are full of stored trains, cleaning them requires moving as many as 10 full consists at a time to have room to clean. Because the staging tracks don’t receive the benefits of continuous running with the cleaning cars, they require a good dose of elbow grease about 4 times a year. Is staging worth the trouble? Absolutely!

Dust has not been a major problem either. This may be due to the environment of my building.

My main suggestion in cutting down maintenance problems (there will alwys be some), is to use quality products and sound construction practices from the beginning - whether it be lumber, adhesives, electrical connections, track, etc. Anything less will surely contribute to headaches down the road.

10

I don’t know why it would be a secret. Anything with moving parts or having moving parts run over it is going to need some TLC from time to time.

Even if this is just model railroading, it is modeling the real thing. And from what I’ve seen real railroads spend lots of time and money maintaining their “layout”, so we should not be surprised that we need to do the same.

I will agree that it is easy to forgot that the bigger the layout the more maintence will be need. We forget that the track it just one part of it. Wires, trees, buildings, etc., will all need some maintenance.

11

Right now I just wish I had a layout to maintain.

James

12

One of the things I’m facing (and I discuss it in detail if you click here ) is the maintenance that has come up after 8 years of regular monthly operating sessions.

The dirty little secret part is as you run trains on your layout, stuff breaks, stuff gets out of alignment, and stuff gets dirty. The prototype faces the same thing, of course, but we just never think about it on our models.

For example, I now have some 60 railroad cars that are in my RIP track needing some sort of repairs: missing coupler springs, missing detail parts (brake wheels, stirrup steps), lose weights, derails a lot … did you hear that, 60 cars? I’ve got about 300 cars on the layout, so that’s 20% of the cars that have gotten damaged just in routine operation of the layout.

Similar story with locos. I clean and clean and clean loco wheels and now as I pull serious maintenance on the locos after 8 years of operation (and carefully disassembling each loco) I’m finding lint buildup around loco axles that’s just awful, black gunk buildup all over the insides of the loco sideframes (from years of wheel cleaning by running one end of the loco at full speed over an alcohol soaked paper towel) … and even wheelsets that have a tightened guage on them. That’s 40+ locos that I have to take apart and do serious cleaning and adjusting on after 8 years of operation.

Then there’s turnouts that need work because the points don’t throw like they used to, or the points don’t carry the current like they used to … 120 turnouts on the layout.

The layout’s got 1200 feet of track, and it gets pretty dirty after operating the layout for years and only doing periodic spot track cleaning by hand with a bright boy. How would you like to run a track cleaning car around the layout to every inch of track every few months? Not my idea of a good time.

It finally got so bad after years of deferred maintenance (I kept adding ne

13

Ahhh…layout maitenence, my favourite aspect of the hobby… NOT, lucky that I only have 16 feet of mainline track to clean and maybe 10 feet of spurs etc [:)]

14

Speaking about maintaining layouts, I must be lucky as I really do not spend any time at all having to do maintenance. When I get cars giving trouble I have a bad-order card made out right away and the car is fixed before the next session. I have over 850 cars on the layout at all time so doing the cars as they need work keeps me from having to do a bunch all at one time. As for track maintenance and turnout repair maybe a cleaning of the points but so far I really do not do any. The track never has to be cleaned (as in running cleaning cars or bright boys) as I used the metal polish trick back in July of 2003 (that is 3 years now with no weekly, monthly or yearly cleaning. Now I know there are some on the forums that will argue about this but my crew knows when it is time to clean as there is not layout running that night and THEY are the ones helping to clean it! They did it a lot before I used the metal polish! Oh by the way I have over 2800 feet of track and 305 turnouts to clean so it is a major undertaking that the crew does not want to get into. Also I seem to be going against the norms here as I have not yet changed out all of my rolling stock wheels to metal ones. As the cars need work I usually just clean off the wheels and repair what is needed and then return them to service. Some could argue that I have a climate controlled room! Well I don’t just a dehumidifier running and trying to keep a 2200 sq ft room under control. Now I have to admit that when I had the new house built I knew what I had to do to keep the basement dry. And with a plastic covered ceiling above my drop ceiling ( yes I have a double wide covering my basement!) it keeps ALL of the dust from coming down on my layout. Now this layout is only going on it’s 6th year, so I may still run into the problems that Joe talks about. But so far I DON”T have or do ANY maintenance. The following info is a little long and it may/will go against the current supposedly normal practices but the info presented is from 20 year

15

Wow, very interesting post, Bob!

Part of my problem is deferred maintenance that has caught up with me. I mostly have been adding new cars to the layout and not fixing ones that have gotten minor operational damage (missing brake wheels, missing stirrup steps, lose weights, etc.) so the “RIP track” now has 60 some cars in it which is a little ridiculous.

The loco “tear-down” mainenance is also probably overdue, and I’m a bit shocked at the wear in the locos, plus the black gunk all over the inside of the sideframes from 8 years of wheel cleaning flinging the gunk around inside the sideframes – and all the accumulated lint wrapped around the axles.

One area where I can say I have not had any problems is the wiring (thank goodness – I hate layout wiring – I understand how to do it, it’s just not my favorite activity). I’ve used 12 guage stranded wire for my power bus, and feeder drops to each section of rail – and suitcase connectors off the main bus to terminal strips for the feeder drops. My wiring problems are zip – none.

Most of my turnouts are DCC friendly, but I’m finding the electrical connectivity to the points is less-than-stellar as things age. I have several turnouts I need to add some whisker jumpers from the closure rails to the points so the points aren’t dead.

I could have done all this probaby more on an “as you go” basis, but the layout ran well for nearly 8 years without doing it, so I didn’t bother. Things have started to go downhill with increasing speed the last 2 years or so – enough that I decided it was time to get serious about doing a thorough housecleaning style maintenance on the whole layout.

I am looking forward to using the metal polish track cleaning idea. In 8 years of layout operation, I have never cleaned the track from one end of the layout to the other – just spot cleaned as the need came up. But I also run a few cars with masonite sliders on them, so one could assume this means there’s always some track cleaning going on

16

I have my share of maintenance but that doesn’t bother me, it’s all in an evening’s operation (to paraphrase "it’s all in a day’s work). Whar really bugs me is that in the course of time all colors are fading, everything, trees, ground cover, balast gets an uniform greyish hue. It’s not only dust that settles and sticks but colors (pigments) are just not permanent under constant natural light. In real nature colors that fade under influence of the sun tend to become brownish. I haven’t found a solution to this problem apart from refrershing the ground cover, carefully waterspraying the trees and brushing/vacuuming the balast to at least restoring part of the original colors.

17

I think planning for maintenance in the front end makes the job easier later. My layout is small 9.5 x 6.5 and as such easy to work on. I’m experimenting with metal polish on the rails to see results. After about a month, the waxed rails are staying cleaner on both the often used and less frequently used sections.

Jim

18

I hate cleaning track with a passion. It sucks! But, since I don’t operate my layout very much, I don’t have a choice. I do know that swapping out my plastic wheelsets for metal ones has helped a bit–the plastic ones seem to attract lots of dirt. I start off by using some Goo Gone on a paper towel to scrub the track down. I go over the entire layout–all the spurs, passing tracks, etc. Then I’ll clean the wheels on my locomotives–there’s no point of having clean track and dirty locomotive wheels. When that’s all done, I’ll take my worst-running engine (my Baldwin S12) and run it over the entire layout. Wherever that thing stalls, I use a Brite Boy to scrub the track.

One think I should mention, is that the frogs on Atlas turnouts seem to attract dirt–it usually gets caught where the rails cross.

I don’t have many cars on the RIP track. Whenever I have a problem, I stop what I’m doing and fix it. However, if it’s a track problem, I sometimes leave a note on the layout–I don’t have any scenery, so it’s pretty simple to scribble on the tabletop.

19

This is a very interesting topic.

Model railroads are odd in that they contain a lot of little details, fragile things, etc. They’re unlike most things in our houses / garages. Most other things can be vacuumed, washed, etc., and don’t have tons of moving parts.

I almost think that model railroads are on a continuous decline from day one. You build it, then things start to deteriorate.

One of the worst offenders seems to be scenery. It gets dusty/dirty, and how could you really control that? You could try to slow the process, but you’re only slowing it down.

I grew up as a kid seeing a huge 2-rail O-gauge layout at the LA county fair. It was huge. The equipment running on it was beautiful. But there was no denying it was on a constant decline over the years. The scenery, etc. was aging, and that’s just a fact. They layout was there for like 50 years or something before being removed (still makes me sad).

I’ve been getting back into the hobby by learning to handlay track and turnouts. I have a couple scratchbuilt turnouts in the garage, and I kid you not, when they are a couple days old, they’re dusty already.

Here is an interesting concept: Garden Railroading. With garden railroading, the scenery is alive. You have to continually work on it, but it doesn’t get “old”.

My plan is to have a couple modules for an HO layout, with a return loop or something. The idea would be the modules would be covered in sort of a shadow-box to keep the dust minimized, could be taken outside for photography, etc.

I personally have abandoned the concept of a layout being a way to model a “railroad”. For me, model railroading is all about the “stage” concept - mentioned in MR years ago, where the layout is merely a “snapshot” of a railroad line. Basically, a small scene where the trains come in on one side, and exit the other side.&

20

Joe,The club I was a active member of for 16 years operates twice a week-average 5 hours per meeting…As far as maintenace…How about as needed and no routine work nights? We simply call a “work Saturday” and fix the problem.This has been going on since we rebuilt the layout back in 93.Of course we kept to the KISS method in wiring-you’ll not find a spaghetti bowl of wires under the layout thanks to our members that are electricians by trade…We use Atlas switches and switch machines and code 100 track-our track is bullet proof…Power is by several MRC CM20s with walk around throttles.

Maintenace? Only has needed and then that’s far and few between.