Track cleaning car recommendations

[muktown128]

I am a chemist and Peteski is correct in his analysis 

Grease and oil are non-polar materials and would dissolve easier in non-polar solvents like heptane/naphtha/mineral spirits than in polar solvents like isopropanol (alcohol).

I would stick with solvents that are a little faster evaporating (heptane/naphtha versus mineral spirits).

You could also use xylene (xylol) or toluene (toluol) to dissolve oil or grease, but these are more aggressive solvents and may attack plastic or paint.

Regards,
Scott

[C855B]

... You could also use xylene (xylol) or toluene (toluol) to dissolve oil or grease, but these are more aggressive solvents and may will attack plastic or paint.

Fixed that for ya' - been down that road.

At the moment, I'm a lot more interested in non-polar weather.

[mmagliaro]

Within the past three or so weeks I started running Dust Monkeys on all of my trains including the roundy round under my lady friend's glass top kitchen table.  After my first cleaning with Iso alcohol soaked into the pads, then clean the pad, then soak it and run again, about three times in a row until they were coming up clean-ish I just leave them on a car all of the time, running dry.  After five or ten hours running I check them, they do have black lines on them, so I clean them quickly in alcohol and put them back on.  There is little if any indication of wear so their useful life seems like it will be very good.  While they do seem to work well this far time will be the proof.

Let me add a few things to that summary.  I have one of those lit, overly bright, Kato cabooses.  It was a bit of a flickerer, at least  a blink through an occasional switch, and I had it in my plans to open it up and at least dim it but maybe even remove the lighting.  Without planning it, it proved to be a good test vehicle.  After running the dust monkeys for about the first hour,  all was running OK but then I noticed (not sure when it happened) that ALL flickering of the caboose had stopped.  That's a first for that one.  That was about two weeks ago and I do run trains, on average, 1-3 hours every other day, cycling around while I'm working on things.   It was impressive enough to me in the short time I used them that a couple of days ago I purchased another four pack so I have them on every caboose that runs with the idea being that if a train is moving the track is getting wiped.  They are very light, very low friction, and hard to imagine they could be effective but that black mark appearing on the pad isn't magic   Will it work over the long haul?  I don't know yet but so far it seems to be well worth the trouble, or lack thereof.   Things have been running pretty flawlessly this far.  Also, it occurred to me that with the wipe on every movement it may slow down wheel crud buildup, too.  Any crud on the pad is crud that would otherwise be on the rail or wheels.

I'll report back after a month or so but I'm at least sure it helps.  The degree to which it helps is yet to be proven.

Extremely interesting.  I have long been convinced that at least on my layout, the real culprit is DUST, not oxidation.    When I let the layout sit, and then foolishly run an engine without cleaning the rails, it will make it perhaps once around before the wheels are so loaded with dirt that it won't run.  But if I just take a soft paint brush and give the mainline a quick brush-off wherever I can easily reach (which isn't perfect, I know), the results are far far better.  But the fact that an engine will start out okay on the dormant layout tells me that the rails are not oxidized or non-conductive.  It's just that the accumulated dust sticks happily to the wheels as they roll over.

Getting rid of that dust is probably what got your Kato caboose to run flicker free.

So now my policy is to brush off and run a track cleaner car around a couple of times before any engines or rolling stock get on the line.

Do these Dust Monkeys work okay on cars that ride at "prototype" heights?  I have read that they cause trouble if you don't put them on a car that rides a little high on the rails. 

[Cajonpassfan]

[quote author=mmagliaro link=topic=41162.msg557229#msg557229 date=15151116
...
Do these Dust Monkeys work okay on cars that ride at "prototype" heights?  I have read that they cause trouble if you don't put them on a car that rides a little high on the rails.
[/quote]

Max, I have them on a bunch of cars running in both directions, and love them. They do deal with dust nicely. The only issue I have had is one snagging on a HUgE gap. Fixed...
Otto

[narrowminded]

Do these Dust Monkeys work okay on cars that ride at "prototype" heights?  I have read that they cause trouble if you don't put them on a car that rides a little high on the rails.

They attach to the axle, clip on, so ride height should have no bearing on it.  If you have a split axle, power pickup truck, they won't fit those axles but any conventional axle should work.  For as little as they cost I suspect it would be worth a try.

Also, by putting them on each caboose on the layout I have one wiping at all times AND it's easy to find them.   They're on the caboose.

[GP40X]

I was lucky enough to pick up an early version (Micro-Trains Body) of the Aztec Eliminator track cleaning car with a Cratex roller.  Great car with the roller, brushes and a magnet to pick up any metal bits laying around.  Replacing the body with a MTL 21110 body renumbered to a MW number with a silver patch for my MOW train.  Thinking about getting an Aztec Predator to be able to go wet with a handi wipe roller w/ Naptha/alcohol and then use the canvas roller in the Eliminator to dry it.  I have used the Masonite pads in the past and while they do work, they have to be replaced every so often.

[narrowminded]

Extremely interesting.  I have long been convinced that at least on my layout, the real culprit is DUST, not oxidation.    When I let the layout sit, and then foolishly run an engine without cleaning the rails, it will make it perhaps once around before the wheels are so loaded with dirt that it won't run.  But if I just take a soft paint brush and give the mainline a quick brush-off wherever I can easily reach (which isn't perfect, I know), the results are far far better.  But the fact that an engine will start out okay on the dormant layout tells me that the rails are not oxidized or non-conductive.  It's just that the accumulated dust sticks happily to the wheels as they roll over.

Getting rid of that dust is probably what got your Kato caboose to run flicker free.

So now my policy is to brush off and run a track cleaner car around a couple of times before any engines or rolling stock get on the line.

Do these Dust Monkeys work okay on cars that ride at "prototype" heights?  I have read that they cause trouble if you don't put them on a car that rides a little high on the rails.

Summary after a couple of months.  The dust monkeys don't completely eliminate all track cleaning issues forever but they are definitely worth using, at least for my conditions.  Very few issues and when it happens (once in a month?) the spot has a visible black crud spot.  And your feeling that the black oxide alone wasn't the biggest issue but dust was, seems to hold for my conditions as well.  I can have trains running fine for weeks on end but if I wipe an arbitrary spot on the track after more than a couple of days after a thorough cleaning there is black on the wiper but the trains are still running fine and for weeks/ months more. 

Bottom line, I haven't done a real complete cleaning in a few months and haven't had any problems.  I have swapped out the pads on the regular runners with clean ones (a few weeks to a month?) and then cleaned the used with alcohol and put away for the next swap.  I don't have any solid recommendation on that interval and maybe I didn't even need to clean them when I did but once in your hands it's near zero effort to just swap and then clean the used one.  I haven't worn any out yet. 

A few sidings do not see regular use and if they've sat unused for a while they can have some issues on the first few passes.  Run a train with the monkey over it a few times and it's good.  I do run trains with some regularity which I think helps too but the reliabilty is definitely upped.  I'll continue using these.

[peteski]

My friend uses a "track cleaning train".  It has couple of locos, then a car with abrasive rubber (Cratex) roller car, followed by a Centerline wet cleaning tank a alcohol-moistened pad, and the last car is a car with dry absorbent roller (don't recall the brand name).  That does a decent job cleaning the track on his layout. I really don't think there is a single ideal cleaning car that can do a good job, but a set of cleaning cars can work well.

[DKS]

FWIW, I've been working with Rick Spano on his large basement layout for the last nearly-fifty years. We've tried just about everything known to man when it comes to track cleaning, and over the course of many decades, we've honed in on what really works. Commercial products have consistently been a waste of money. Clipper oil (or any variation thereof) has been utterly disastrous under any circumstances; we're constantly perplexed by modelers who swear by it. And any such liquid product that claims to be "electrically conductive" is snake oil--it's easy enough to debunk such nonsense.

99% of the time, a "track cleaning special" (a couple of locos dragging a few Masonite pad cars around) does the trick. If there's been a lot of construction that's raised more than the usual amount of dust, we'll include a Tomix vacuum car on the track cleaning train--the only commercial product that has proven to be effective, albeit not a cure-all by any means. But that's been it. No roller cars with either abrasive rollers or chemical pads--they make better paperweights. In mega-extreme cases, we'll use a Brite-Boy followed by hand-wiping the track with alcohol-moistened paper towel, but that's a very rare necessity.
 

[CNscale]

The OP was asking about track cleaning cars, of which I don't run (or own) any, but since this thread has evolved into a sharing of general track cleaning dogma, I thought I'd share mine.

I was almost ready to give up the hobby altogether because of electrical pickup problems. I couldn't run anything around the layout more than once without stalling. I used to spend hours scrubbing the entire layout with a Brite-Boy, only have to do it again the next time I wanted to run trains. After collecting advice (most of it conflicting) from a wide variety of sources, here's what I came up with:

First I sanded all rails with progressively finer grits of sandpaper, finishing with something like 1200 grit. Then I polished the rails with a stainless steel washer, using a fair bit of pressure. I'm convinced I can feel the rails getting smoother as I do this, as the friction on a given section seems to reduce as I'm polishing. (But hey -- track cleaning is all religion, so maybe it's just in my head). The next step was to apply No-Ox (BarMills) over the whole layout, let it sit overnight, and then rub it all off with a paper towel. And I mean rub, not just wipe. I heard enough about it to convince me to try it, but I certainly didn't want any greasy residue sucking down dust. Finally, I dragged a stick of graphite across the rails in several spots and ran a locomotive to spread it around.

It works - for me. I can leave the layout idle for weeks (in a finished basement room with the door closed, so minimal dust) and then run a train with no stalls. If I leave the layout idle longer than that (which frequently happens, unfortunately) I'll vacuum first, and touch up any trouble spots with an alcohol-soaked cloth. But nothing abrasive. Once a year or so I re-do the graphite treatment.

Of course, YMMV

[peteski]

After collecting advice (most of it conflicting) from a wide variety of sources, here's what I came up with:

First I sanded all rails with progressively finer grits of sandpaper, finishing with something like 1200 grit. Then I polished the rails with a stainless steel washer, using a fair bit of pressure. I'm convinced I can feel the rails getting smoother as I do this, as the friction on a given section seems to reduce as I'm polishing. (But hey -- track cleaning is all religion, so maybe it's just in my head). The next step was to apply No-Ox (BarMills) over the whole layout, let it sit overnight, and then rub it all off with a paper towel. And I mean rub, not just wipe. I heard enough about it to convince me to try it, but I certainly didn't want any greasy residue sucking down dust. Finally, I dragged a stick of graphite across the rails in several spots and ran a locomotive to spread it around.

Ah, the "gleam" method using a stainless steel washer for burnishing the rail head.  Years ago someone posted this method on the Atlas Forum. Were you the originator?

[CNscale]

No, I never managed to get an account on the Atlas forum. (Tried several times, but my account requests were never approved).
Not sure where I picked up the rail burnishing recommendation -- probably from one of the (many) threads on track cleaning at nscale.net.

[narrowminded]

Within the past three or so weeks I started running Dust Monkeys on all of my trains including the roundy round under my lady friend's glass top kitchen table.  After my first cleaning with Iso alcohol soaked into the pads, then clean the pad, then soak it and run again, about three times in a row until they were coming up clean-ish I just leave them on a car all of the time, running dry.  After five or ten hours running I check them, they do have black lines on them, so I clean them quickly in alcohol and put them back on.  There is little if any indication of wear so their useful life seems like it will be very good.  While they do seem to work well this far time will be the proof.

Let me add a few things to that summary.  I have one of those lit, overly bright, Kato cabooses.  It was a bit of a flickerer, at least  a blink through an occasional switch, and I had it in my plans to open it up and at least dim it but maybe even remove the lighting.  Without planning it, it proved to be a good test vehicle.  After running the dust monkeys for about the first hour,  all was running OK but then I noticed (not sure when it happened) that ALL flickering of the caboose had stopped.  That's a first for that one.  That was about two weeks ago and I do run trains, on average, 1-3 hours every other day, cycling around while I'm working on things.   It was impressive enough to me in the short time I used them that a couple of days ago I purchased another four pack so I have them on every caboose that runs with the idea being that if a train is moving the track is getting wiped.  They are very light, very low friction, and hard to imagine they could be effective but that black mark appearing on the pad isn't magic   Will it work over the long haul?  I don't know yet but so far it seems to be well worth the trouble, or lack thereof.   Things have been running pretty flawlessly this far.  Also, it occurred to me that with the wipe on every movement it may slow down wheel crud buildup, too.  Any crud on the pad is crud that would otherwise be on the rail or wheels.

I'll report back after a month or so but I'm at least sure it helps.  The degree to which it helps is yet to be proven.

Not only is this an old topic but to add insult to the internet rules, I quoted my own post!    This is an update to that old post, as was promised. 

It's been about six months now running the dust monkeys.  I have exchanged them for clean ones about twice that I can recall.  It has also been the winter months with relatively low humidity for my locale.  It's been holding pretty steady between 20 and 25% for the bulk of the time and now, just in the recent week or so, it has started back up to summer levels with this week warming up and holding between 45 and 50% humidity.  In the height of the summer it will average around 70% with  regular excursions into the 90's. 

So far I haven't cleaned my track once, running a dust monkey on every caboose, therefore every train.  I run the trains at least once a week for an hour or so and sometimes more frequently.  What it seems is that for all of these years, dust was a WAY bigger culprit than oxidation of the nickel silver rails. 

Prompted by another track cleaning thread, I realized I hadn't run the Kato overlit caboose that I have and had discovered was a good test car for track cleanliness.  So tonight I hooked it up on the back of a train.  First couple of laps it flickered and even shut off for sections of track at a time, improving steadily, until by about the fifth cycle around it quit flickering altogether.   Just like before.   I attribute the flickering internal to the caboose, not having been run and the pickups a little cruddy, and the flickering quitting to the effective pickup design that is the pointed axle... as well as flawless track, of course.   Two tests in one!

What I have also found to be interesting is that at any time I can wipe the rail and get black (oxide?) on my rag.  The black that I had always considered, in addition to some stalls or flickering headlights, the indicator that my track needed cleaning.  Apparently that stuff isn't a problem by itself.  But I also had observed in the past that it could get caked when it had some oil  to hold it (a fresh engine oil leaving some traces?) and the dust that was encountered, becoming that caked black crud I'd find on wheels, even (maybe even especially) the plastic freight cars wheels.  That seems to be a thing of the past since I have been much more cautious about residual oil after a lube and also since running these dust monkeys.  That deserves a little more time but so far, so good.

I will report back again as the worst humidity season is just starting and may be an aggravating factor with the corrosion so yet to be fairly tested in that condition.  We'll see.  At this point I'm SURE the dust monkeys have helped as I never would have made it this long without several complete track wipe downs.  Even if the corrosion does come back enough to require a thorough cleaning, maybe as an annual event, I will be happy as it was much more frequent than that until now.  And at this point I won't be surprised if it goes longer than that.  So far, so good excellent! 

[peteski]

What I have also found to be interesting is that at any time I can wipe the rail and get black (oxide?) on my rag.

I believe that what you are seeing is just trace of the nickel-silver metal which was abraded by the rag.  I can take a piece of new track and clean the bejesus out of it, then rub a piece of paper over that track and see the dark streaks on that piece of paper. Paper and rags are likely slightly abrasive, and I think that they remove traces of nickel-silver resulting in visible residue.  I don't think it is dirt or oxide.

[narrowminded]

I believe that what you are seeing is just trace of the nickel-silver metal which has be abraded by the rag.  I can take a piece of new track and clean the bejesus out of it, then rub a piece of paper over that track and see the dark streaks on that piece of paper. Paper and rags are likely slightly abrasive, and I think that they remove traces of nickel-silver resulting in visible residue.  I don't think it is dirt or oxide.

Hi Pete.  Welcome back.

It would be interesting to see someone else's results running those dust monkeys on some of the bigger layouts.  Any chance you have or maybe could and report your results?  I've been very satisfied with the results and can't believe it's just my good luck.