This is interesting.
Sandpaper, while more labor intensive, is far cheaper than the cleaning car. Should we use sandpaper on the DCC layout? If so, are the grits mentioned in the video correct?
There are two separate interpretations of ‘once and done’ now running around in this thread – three, if we separate the Wahl clipper oil from the No-Ox-Id family.
Personally I’ve always been in the ‘prototype railhead appearance’ camp, and have come to subscribe to the microarcing theory of progressive track damage, both of which are addressed nicely by the more refined ‘gleaming’ process.
If you like the idea of TOR either with the light nonoxidizing oil film or the dielectric grease, I still think that ‘optimizing the railheads’ is a good first step before ‘coating’. And in such case the ‘once and done’ aspect of the gleaming process would be even better established…
Those who have done and researched this recently are better guides for the cost. The principal money expense is for the various grades of ‘wet or dry’ sandpaper and the very fine grit polishing powder or compound; not everyone appears to be wet-sanding with the very fine grits which I think might increase effective paper life for this purpose as at the finer grits the ‘metal mirror’ effect builds up fast. You may be paying more in shipping for the specialty very fine grit papers and laps than for the actual media cost (which indicates that ‘buying in bulk’ for groups and perhaps some amateur resale might be a strategy – this is why I mentioned the gallon size of No-Ox-Id A special compared to the price for a tube on Amazon or Noalox at a hardware emporium.
A pack of the stainless washers (so you can pick a ‘good one’ or tinker with shaping and polishing the burnishing surface) will be expensive as washers go … but not that much in ‘absolute’ terms and, for all intents and purposes, ‘once and done’ for even large and growing layouts.
Overmod; use a radius section of the layout to clean wheels,
to clarify, let the trains run by on a given radius section that you can wipe down after each train pass, eventually most of the dirt is scruffed off on that radius by the trains and then you merely wipe the crud each pass, you’ll notice less dirt on the wipe each time…
Semafores
It is a lot of work, but on my new layout, I soldered a pair of feeders to every 3 foot section of flex track. Well worth the effort.
Rich
That’s my opinion as well.
Rich
I have never seriously gleemed a whole layout, never had any issues.
Yes the gunk is nickle oxide, plastic wheels don’t cause it, but they attract it. Metal wheels not so much.
My understanding of the science supports the idea of gleeming, but I know lots of guys with big layouts who have never done it, their trains run fine, they clean track seldom to never, have few to zero dirty track issues.
I will be interested to see what happens on my new layout? I run DC, at a max voltage of about 14 volts, PWM speed control. More arcing or less arcing than the hybrid AC signal of DCC?
So glad I’m not soldering feeders every 3-6 feet on the up coming 1400 feet of track…
Each control block gets a feeder, each block has all soldered rail joints, throttle buss from wireless throttle recievers is #12 wire, drops from track to local relay stations are #18. Control blocks sometimes 60 feet long.
No voltage drop issues… Is the arcing different?
Sheldon
Don’t use acetone anywhere indoors and certainly nowhere near anything that sparks. The stuff is highly flammable and the vapours are as toxic as the fluid. It absorbs readily through the skin so use nitrile gloves if you use acetone on anything.
We didn’t used to pay attention to this in olden days (women decorated their nails with acetone based “polish”) but now we know better.
Ditto lacquer thinner. It’s vile stuff (contains acetone, not to mention toluene . ).
Even mineral spirits like Varsol shouldn’t be used indoors anymore. Too toxic.
Given that deposits on nickel silver rail can be wiped off with dry paper towel all this talk about gleaming seems a tad OTT, (OCD?).
BTW, the only reason not to pour IPA into a shot glass is the glass is too small.
People need to stop using IPA as an acronym for isopropyl alcohol. IPA contains only ethanol, made from malted 2 row barley…
I like that quarter Kevin.
I use laquer thinner in a rail cleaning car that works the same way as the expensive car works.
On the pad, I use the same material that is on the CMX car. Works fine.
I might do this once, or at the very most twice a year.
The never ending topic of track cleaning. [|)]
Mike.
The whole gleaming thing seems like too much work. All I ever did was thr burnishing step with a hardened washer (actually, I used the flat side of my hardened wire cutters used to cut piano wire). No polish stop. Just rubbed along the rails, both at the same time, gnetly around switch point so as not to bend or break them, and I nevber had any issues with running trains. No need for keep alives, either.
–Randy
It sure does. I just clean off black gunk when it appears with a Bright Boy. That’s about the full extent of my track cleaning.
Rich
Once I did the burnishing, I didn’t even have to do that much. Unless I painted some track and needed to clean the paint off the tops of the rails.
I’ve had a couple of piece of flex track (Peco this time) set up on my workbench, with a Peco #6 electrofrog, and DCC clip leaded to the free end of flex that connects to the point side of the turnout (can’t feed an Electrofrog from the frog side) and the other day I fired it up for the first time in a long time. There was a little bit of stuttering and flickering of headlights, but after I ran a loco back and forth on both routes, it cleaned right up. This is just sitting there on my workbench which is in my office room, for whatever reason things tend to gather dust quickly in my house, even though there are no carpets. Probably pet dander, and definitely get plenty of hair, 2 Pugs release a lot of magic Pug glitter. But if that’s the extend of “cleaning” I have to do up here - just run a train back and forth a few times - then I expect no issues in the basement. Floor is sealed down there, walls are all drywall and painted, drop ceiling is installed, and even where it had to be left open for pipes and the furnace and water heater exhausts, the opening intot he drop ceiling area was closed up. The dogs don’t go down there, so if anything it’s probably less dusty in the basement. Only dust down there is the sawdust I am making while building benchwork.
–Randy
Speaking of Bright Boy, I couldn’t find my today, so I grabbed a piece of cork sheet and, voila, the black gunk disappeared like magic.
Rich
Which, hint, hint, hint, shows that abrasive that cuts micro-ruts in the railhead isn’t necessary to get it clean.
AKA the lesson taught by John Allen’s back-side-of-the-masonite weighted pads.
Gleaming only ‘readies’ the track to produce less black stuff. And it does that, I think, quite well. But the black oxide from microarcing should just wipe off nickel silver; only the micro-pits remain to hold whatever ‘wicks’ or gets rolled into them, and then pose little dielectric interruptions for more micro-arcing on powered wheels, and a source of transfer-printable gunk for all wheels.
Did you look closely at the rail after the black disappeared like magic, to see if ALL of it did? It would be the itty-bitty black points that would be the problem…
It really surprised me to see how effective that scrap of cork could be, suggesting that the Bright Boy is way overkill.
As soon as I posted my last reply, I thought that I should have elaborated on the comment “disappeared like magic”. [(-D] It disappeared from the rails and appeared on the cork as dark black smudges.
Did I look closely at the rail after rubbing the cork sheet scrap over the rail? Yep, I put on the Optivisor and the rubbed area looked super clean and the performance of locos going over that area at slow speeds was much improved. That was good enough for me.
Rich
Which also proposes an alternative to the masonite car, since the stuff you get these days doesn’t seem to be at all like the actual Masonite produced material of 40-50 years ago. A flat piece of just about anything, with a piece of cork stuck on the bottom (not with a permanent adhesive, so you can peel off the worn piece of cork and swap in another). Som medium thick styrene, or even a square of modern hardboard, with the extra step of adding the replaceable cork pad. A few such cars and a decent operating scheme will mean pretty much the entire layout will get run over at least once in an operating session by one of the cork cars. Never clean track by hand again.
–Randy
In the construction business, we use these heavy duty, nearly lint free paper towels that are known by names like “rags in a box”. People ask us why we buy them rather than use actual scrap cloth rags, or much cheaper bargain paper towels.
Why? Because they work better and save time, and give superior results.
We use them for everything one might need a rag for in construction, gluing PVC pipe, paint work, job cleanup issues (with Windex), wiping flux off copper pipe solder joints, working with caulk (or adhesive caulk like I put down track with), and much more.
I found they work really good for simply wiping off track on those rare occasions when it is necessary. Either dry, or with just the smallest application of “Goo Gone”, the black stuff is all gone.
A little Goo Gone on one of these paper towels, layed over the track, and a loco held in place to spin its wheels - presto! Clean wheels that seem to then stay clean for a long time.
And these small amounts of Goo Gone have never seemed to cause any loss of traction. Of course a dry “rag in the box” seems to easily remove the small amount of Goo Gone to an indectable level.
Warning, do not try this with an “ordinary” paper towel, you will end up with shredded paper towel in your loco and all over the place…
Sheldon
With all this track gleam. I have a couple of Masonite box cars I bought from eBay
You’ld love the Railroad across the Wisconsin border from Minnesota that made the Burlington Northern Green Machine gleam
The Osceola Railroad which is a very small railroad
Now back to our regularly scheduled program here
TF
Randy, I trust you are aware that cork with the right prep is nearly the gold standard for both glass polishing and getting a mirror finish in knifemaking. I am beginning to think that a modified well, well, well-broken-in cork belt charged with green compound might be a secret weapon in gleaming –