Micro Trains October Announcements and Releases

[Sokramiketes]

Are we turning into a bunch of "A" board snipers? Complaining about stuff you haven't seen or tried yet? I know there are many MT hater's out-there...that's your right. Yes, you can nit-pick MT's ad on semantics, but read it for what it SAYS, and it's accurate. The Atlas/Tomix car isn't a box car is it?

What it says in the Micro-news blurb is, "...to produce the ONLY motorized track cleaning car in N scale."

What exactly about that statement is accurate again? And what does boxcar or not boxcar have to do with it?

[Ian MacMillan]

Are we turning into a bunch of "A" board snipers? Complaining about stuff you haven't seen or tried yet? I know there are many MT hater's out-there...that's your right. Yes, you can nit-pick MT's ad on semantics, but read it for what it SAYS, and it's accurate. The Atlas/Tomix car isn't a box car is it?

What it says in the Micro-news blurb is, "...to produce the ONLY motorized track cleaning car in N scale."

What exactly about that statement is accurate again? And what does boxcar or not boxcar have to do with it?

Marketing must be from the Gore skool of reality....

[Mark5]

Are we turning into a bunch of "A" board snipers? Complaining about stuff you haven't seen or tried yet? I know there are many MT hater's out-there...that's your right. Yes, you can nit-pick MT's ad on semantics, but read it for what it SAYS, and it's accurate. The Atlas/Tomix car isn't a box car is it?

What it says in the Micro-news blurb is, "...to produce the ONLY motorized track cleaning car in N scale."

What exactly about that statement is accurate again? And what does boxcar or not boxcar have to do with it?

Marketing must be from the Gore skool of reality....

Hey, are you a bullfight fan too?

[Nato]

    I still have my Flieshman Track Cleaning car, mine is painted in Swiss Eidelwise Express Blue & White scheme,I found it runs rather fast and trying to get replacement round small disks was not easy. First track cleaning cars (have two of em) I bought were from Con Cor European made, a tank car with two axel trucks, sold in Europe with oil company colors in U.S. it was MOW Silver with various road names on silver placards to be added to the sides. A small removeable top cap allowed fluid supplyed to be eyedroppered in. When tank was full it leaked out onto a felt pad attached to a brass wiper arm. Problem was it drained faster then you could run it around, so I began just applying fluid to the pad, running car till pad was dry, then reapplying more. This car sort of worked. My next car came from Proto West in California, it was the standard box car conversion with Masonite pad on bottom, this worked great untill the pad got so grungy it needed to be replaced. The Roco cleaning car is a variation on this usually a BN reefer with a bright boy-like pad on bottom . I have three types of Aztec cars they work fairly well, one with Crayex roller, one with roller and magnets & pipecleaner pieces to get extra debres, and then there is the Monsoon,looks like the new MT car, uses a Bachperson Hi Cube box car body, contains a tank for fluid with a needle valve to adjust flow rate and cleaning pads and roller. The car I use the most now is my Tomix car pre Atlas ordered thru BLW which included a large bottle of fluid. It came from the factory set to the Suck-O-Lux vaccum mode I didn't know how dirty between my track was. I still preferr a large oversized Bright Boy block for most general usuage unless the track extra bad, then it is time for the Tomix. Tomix sold for awhile (available from BLW) what looked like a two car Japanese Commuter or medium distance train, that actually was a rail grinder cleaner(think Spino Rail Grinding) I resisted buying one of these not sure what it would do to the tracks, but I'll bet there could have been miniture sparks flying or a bad short. Nate Goodman (Nato).

[tom mann]

Is track cleaning really much of a problem?  A few swipes with a bright boy seem to do the trick, and at a much faster rate than moving a track cleaning car around the layout.  And if the track is so dirty, how is the track cleaning car getting power (for both the spinning disk and the engine to move it)?

[up1950s]

Some folkes are lucky or unlucky enough to have hard to reach tracks , and in that case this might help . You can eat lunch while your main gets cleaned .

[Mark5]

Nate,

Thanks for the comprehensive rundown!

To the abrasive folks:

Personally, I am 100% against the brightboy concept. The theory is that the abrasion creates thousands of tiny gashes on the surface of the rail, which in turn tend to collect "stuff".

It's just a theory though, I've not conducted any controlled experiments to test my hypothesis.

Mark

[DKS]

Personally, I am 100% against the brightboy concept. The theory is that the abrasion creates thousands of tiny gashes on the surface of the rail, which in turn tend to collect "stuff".

If you took a microscopic photo of brand new rail, it would look about the same as rail that's just been cleaned with an abrasive cleaner. The surface is anything but smooth and perfect. The only way to get rid of all the "tiny gashes" is to polish the rail--which some fellows do.

[Mark5]

Don't confuse me with the facts!

[DKS]

To the abrasive folks:

I resemble that remark.

[Mark5]

Only thing I'm at all interested in is the WP box.

Heh, I just realized that Athearn recently did this same scheme:



hmmm ....