Whats the best way to remove excess oil from the wheels and trucks of my cars?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Any ideas or suggestions? I’m trying to fix my Walthers 10-5 sleepers, so I can finally run them again.

2

If the wheels are plastic, wipe the wheels and axles with rubbing alcohol. To clean the trucks, either soak them in alcohol or spray alcohol on them with an airbrush.

3

This has to be one of the simplest yet most ingenious ideas I have ever seen to keep wheel sets clean.

This was taken while visiting Ken McCorry’s Conrail layout, it’s simply a strip of paper towel held in place by some metal clips. As the wheels pass through the paper towels they are wiped clean. When the towel gets dirty you pull out the clips and pull more clean towel to replace the dirty one and push the clips back in place. Now before some of you nay sayers chime in and say it doesn’t look real or anything of the like. Ken’s layout is 5000 sq. ft and was built with operations in mind. So I would say it safe to say that as a matter of necessity some of the wipers have to be in visual areas. I can’t recall how many of these little gizmo’s are present on his railroad, but I do know his operating sessions are quite busy and run lots and lots and lots of trains. So for us mere mortal with more modest railroads we can employ the same method on areas of hidden trackage. I have two in place so far on hidden lead in tracks from staging and they work great.

4

The refinement I would add is to use cotton swabs soaked in 70% or 90% alcohol and use fresh ones often so you aren’t just redistributing the oil but truly removing it.

The idea posted above about paper towels pinned to track should work as well, assuming we are talking about oil on wheel treads. But it sounds like the excess oil you are concerned about goes beyond the wheel treads and goes to bearings and such.

For concentrated removal and not routine removal as in the layout he photographed, a dedicated wheel cleaning track on a board where the towels are soaked in alcohol and the cars run over the soaked towel can loosen a surprising amount of wheel tread oil (you may not want a soaked towel on an actual layout using the above pictured idea with scenery and stuff).

Dave Nelson

5

This is genius! I can’t quite tell what the clips are made of and how they attach to the ties. Any pictures of the clips off the track? Thanks for posting this!

6

Dave, that’s exactly what I have attached to my layout next to one end of the control panel. It’s wired to one of my MRC Tech 4 260s. I lay a strip of paper towel moistened with rubbing alcohol across the rails. Then, I set a locomotive on it so that the wheels on one truck are on the paper towel, while the other end is on the rails. I hold the locomotive while I apply power, letting the wheels slip on the paper towel. Then, I swap ends.

The hole at the end of the safety plate is so couplers aren’t butted up against it. The end plates (there’s one at either end) are to prevent disasters.

I’ll be moving the test track so that it’s attached to the bottom edge of the layout, instead of even with the top.

7

Allegheny2-6-6-6, you had posted the similar picture on one of my questions that I had posted. This method works great. I went to a section of track on bare plywood. Cut the ties out and wrapped each rail with paper towel and used a thumb tack to hold it in place. For the last two weeks this has been exchanged for a thin piece of cloth onto whichI pour some rubbing alcohol, the same liquid that goes into the CMX

8

Here’s a link to the relocation project. Cleaning/test track relocation

9

Please excuse my ignorance but where are you getting sufficient oil to cause a major problem from?

Thanks

[8D]

10

Having once “slightly” overoiled the running mechanism of an N-Scale Con-Cor DL I learned the hard way that the absolute solution to the problem of “removing excess oil from the wheels and trucks of cars” is to avoid getting “excess oil on the wheels and trucks of cars!” I can’t quite remember what exactly I did to get all the oil not only off of the wheels and trucks but out of the worm/wormgear/spur gear mechanism. What ever it was I remember it involved some sort of a plastic compatable solvent from a hardware store and about half a box of cotton swabs. I was the laughing stock of my club for quite awhile after that; I was addressed as “Oil Can Harry” for the better part of a year. I certainly don’t want to go through that again!