I’ve been building my layout for 4 years now, and it’s a small but detailed one. So far, most of my efforts have been either on construction or refurbishing old equipment - updating wheels, swapping out horn-hooks for Kadees, etc.
Today, I noticed one of my engines, all of which are relatively new, was running rough. It probably needs some lubrication, or maybe it picked up some junk and needs cleaning.
But, that got me to thinking - once your layout is built, how much time do you need to spend keeping it in good running order? Y’know, lubrication, track cleaning, repairing the occasional loose coupler, that kind of small stuff. Obviously, this time will grow for larger layouts or those with lots of engines, but does it get to the point where it’s all you can do to keep engines from stalling out? Can a layout get so large that you don’t have time to upgrade, only to maintain?
I have a California “Basement”, otherwise known as a garage layout. It’s in the Central Valley of this state, and the area in which I live is INFAMOUS for Pollen. The garage is only partially insulated. It’s a fairly large 24x24 layout, and is about, say, 70% complete, give take a nervous breakdown or two.
I’m one of those guys who does most of their model building during the winter, since the garage is largely 1: too cold or 2: too humid to really go out and run trains (yes, we DO have cold, wet weather out here in the land of Sun and Surf and mostly ‘transplanted’ Fruits and Nuts). So I do most of my train running during the Spring and Summer. Which means getting out the old track cleaning equipment pretty often because of the POLLEN!
Can’t run liquid track-cleaners, that’s like depositing Mississippi Mud on the rails. Use a vacuum and dry-track cleaners. Run the track-cleaning train then vacuum up the residue once a week. Yes, it NEEDS it, once a week. Sometimes twice a day during operations, if I start sneezing. One way I know the Pollen has settled back on the track–I start sneezing and my locos jerk. I have more feeder wires running to my track than the average hospital ICU has tubes running to its patients. I have gone through more hand-vacs than the average Redneck goes through hunting dogs.
But I carry on. I’m a brave soul. And the Pollen keeps dropping. And I keep sneezing and vacuuming. And my locomotives struggle through valiantly. And by golly, the ROYAL GORGE and my freights will get through from Deer Creek over Yuba Summit come Heck or High Pollen. [soapbox]
My background is in aircraft, so I set up what I felt to be a reasonable maintenance schedule several layouts ago. I’m not giving anything but ballpark numbers - my specific intervals are dependent on model age, known history of problems, my layout environment and a number of other variables that will certainly be different from someone else’s.
Track cleaning. My track was ‘Gleamed’ when it was laid. Other than an occasional wipe with a paper towel, nothing has been done since. (My comment about calling out the wedge plow when the debris on the track threatened to make the line impassable wasn’t entirely facetious!)
Locomotive cleaning. If it even hiccups, it gets a bad-order card and gets looked at before the next operating ‘day.’ If it doesn’t hiccup, it gets a complete inspection when it has accrued a certain total mileage (which varies from loco to loco, even in the same class) or six months after its last - whichever occurs first. (EMU and DMU are handled the same way, as are cars with lights and axle/wheel wipers.)
Non-powered rolling stock. Problems get a bad-order card and are either pulled immediately (dropped coupler or wheel/axle failure - I’ve had some) or set on a siding until the world stops for maintenance the following fast-time ‘morning.’ Pulled cars go in a cassette, they aren’t repaired instantly but have to wait for that scheduled maintenance stop. Every car is up for inspection one year after its last service, at which time it’s routed to the service cassette as part of normal layout operations.
I don’t have any scenery yet, but I’ll probably include vacuuming same on a basis of appearance when the time comes. I find myself vacuuming the (to be hidden track) roadbed about once every six weeks in areas wh
Maintenance if you want a good running layout is very important and if your layout is great it could take a lot of time.
The biggest ennemy is dust and corrosion for track which put down the transfer of electricity.
Its reported that when Georges Sellios father of the Franklin and Southmanchester make an open day, he clean the track and check everything on the layout during more a week… On the late Gorre and Daphetid John Allen in the last years say that maintenance was a heavy and buzy work…
On my own Nscale Maclau River RR maintenance is heavy with a lot of track and turnouts in the port area and don’t forget that an Nscale engine is a very sensitive little thing!!!
BUT…
Friend of mine had order and placed a dust filter for the air and a complete sealed door to his layout room. The room itself is slightly pressurized to avoid the intrance of dust, a temperature of 17°centigrade is maintain in the room and a absorber of humidity maintain it to a small level.
His layout room is a average of 16 feet to 42 feet with an HO empire. He reports since the placement of the filter and the special door, dust as nearly dissapear of the room and the general maintenance of the layout had considerably fall down even on the track system. The door and air filter are something to a 2500$ invest. of two or three brass engines…
So I think a lot about this solution for the future of my layout room, because to much maintenance can with time be the only work on the layout and beleive me it’s not a big pleasure to do.
See you later.
Marc
My layout on www.Nscale.org Personnal album, letter"M", album Marc Magnus
First I haven’t checked the wheel gauge on any of my freight cars or locomotives in months-some freight cars may be years-yet I have zero derailments while running on the either HO club layout.Same applies for my N Scale.
Neither of the HO club layouts see any routine maintenance.1 club its strictly as needed and is operated twice a week.The other HO club is constantly rebuilding/changing during the winter months…The N Scale club is modular and 32 of the 54 modulars still looks like the plywood central-we spent more time socializing then we do work but,the layout is fully functional.We used the 1 track approach instead of following N Track design.
Track cleaning…
I believe there is way to much hype on keeping track clean…
Maintenance shouldn’t dominate your efforts. I spend a total of one day a year servicing my 50 odd locomotives that are used on my layout. I usually do that in the fall and to be honest I only grease maybe a handful of them because the rest simply don’t need it. I clean the wheels with the paper towel method at this time as well. As for track cleaning I usually run my CMX Clean Machine around once every 5 or 6 months, that it. It takes about 1/2 an hour and I run it as a work train. I control the humidity in my basement and that is one of the reason’s my track stays clean. My rolling stock gets Kadee couplers installed, the coupler heights checked and adjusted, weighted properly and the wheels checked to make sure they are in gauge when ever a new piece is purchased and I only use steel wheels. I might have one or two cars in the course of a year that gets bad ordered, thats it and its usually because of a broken or missing coupler spring. I think if people are constantly maintaining their layout its because of a poor location like a dusty garage and because of poor quality loco’s and rolling stock.
When I mentioned that prototypes do it I forgot to differentiate between the Penn Central way of doing things back in the 1970’s and those that maintain things so that they’re not out there constantly fixing things----maybe we should also ask what is maintenence?
My idea of maintenence is just the quick go over the tracks and maybe the odd fiddling with the extra picky loke—
LOL!!—I know–the thing that got me was the trackage—in a certain video that came out in the mid-70’s that tried to convince investors—ie; the poor beleagured taxpayer—of needed investment in infrastructure(sound familiar?), there are scenes wherein you could see the rolling stock wobbling around like they were imitating galloping geese!! And restricted trackage and -----[%-)][(-D]
Joe Fugate has published some of his experiences with maintenance at his web site. IIRC, some of his newer Chines plastic diesels weren’t holding up as well as others in a decade of use. The same was true with some of his turnouts, which he has had to replace with handlaid.
In a '60s editorial, Linn Westcott postulated that the average mr shouldn’t have a home layout of more complexity than about 20 turnouts. Both construction time - in an era where everything was kits or scratch-built - and maintenance were factors in the limitation. And as was mentioned, Allen’s G&D did have maintenance issues.
Eventual maintenance time should be a factor in planning, just as space, time, and money are.
Currently, I am operating a small modular layout. Since it is fully DCC - operated, maintenance, i.e. track cleaning, checking alignment of modules and wiring, is an issue. I have set up a routine of checking before every operating session, thus avoiding getting annoyed by stalling locos, or blocked switches.
Maintenance is part of the fun, but should not spoil it.
The best way to minimize layout maintenance is to build it correctly in the first place. As I laid track and switches, I built spiral easements into every curve. Then I ran trains to make sure that regardless of how long or short they were, whether they were being pushed or pulled, or how (reasonably) fast they were running, they would stay on the tracks.
I bought good switches and made sure they were gauged properly. I held off on any ballasting until everything ran well and even now have some sections that little by little are getting ballast.
The wiring is bulletproof. I have wired every single section of track, including frogs and the stock rails on switches. I solder every rail joiner. All feeders are connected to terminal blocks for flexibility and to help detect shorts, which so far have been very few and far between–may two or three at most over five years.
I gave up on suitcase connectors and only will use Posi-Tap connectors from now on. No failures and I have well over 100 of them.
No new piece of rolling stock goes on the rails without checking the couplers for height. I bend up the trip pins slightly as a “just in case” measure.
I last cleaned the track a couple of years ago, using a soft abrasive pad I got from Micro-Mark. Then I applied Wahl Clipper Oil, as I have done for thirty years, at least. On very rare occasion, if I see a headlight flicker, I use another invention from Micro-Mark that is an abrasive pad on the end of an aluminum stick to help in reaching over buildings, etc.
I clean the wheel treads with isopropyl alcohol and a Q-tip whenever I change out locomotives. I rotate the wheels using the Kadee driver cleaner with light pressure. All the wheels on my rolling stock are metal. If the Shop-Vac is handy, I run