AtlasO Track Corrosion

Matt: I've ballasted my Atlas"O" NS before with matte medium and never had corrosion; I just use a Scotchbrite pad to clean residue off and a wipe with 91% isopropyl. Never saw any corrosion and electrical contact is no issue. I'm getting ready to re-ballast some areas after a move and set-up of a new layout and expect no issues. I wouldn't recommend the Brillo pad (fine steel shavings) or the sandpaper (too rough unless down in the 1000 grit range...). Scotchbrite has been no issue for me-I just use it when the isopropyl won't cut through the traction tire residue....

Hope you "come clean" - I do assume you're not talking steel Atlas"O" here. Keep us posted.

After re-reading your post, i just realized you left the glue on the rails overnight; i always wiped the top of the rails with paper towels once I had the glue applied; matte medium is tough to get off your skin once it dries, let alone off railheads after fully dried. Try the Scotchbrite and eventually you'll get it down to bare NS again.

nickel silver rail does oxidize and needs cleaning like any other track, but it is not visible to the eye. if you are seeing corrosion I would suspect some kind of contamination in the glue or water used with the glue that is reacting with the rail.

Correct, used a scotch brite not a brillo. My mistake. I probably left everything in place for 24-36 hours total, not thinking I'd have such a problem. Never have had such a problem leaving glue on the track before for a good bit of time before cleaning it up. 

I'll try to take a picture of the track. 

I did my whole layout with Atlas track and ballasted using the matte medium on all of it, I experienced no corrosion anywhere.

Gandy

Not, necessarily, the same thing...but, I have had many feet of Atlas o track sitting outside in the rain and elements for over a year...no evidence of corrosion in any way, shape, form or fashion.

That's my experience.

I've seen Atlas track do some odd things, too. A friend has it, and our now-defunct

club/train show layout had it. Strange stuff, at times.

No matter; I use GG track, but how about trying a petroleum-based cleaner like mineral

spirits on a denim (cotton, but slightly abrasive - rub your jeans on the track!) rag?

Also, WD-40 on a rag comes highly recommended by Mike Reagan - and me. Petroleum (oil) certainly won't hurt anything - this is model railroading!

Maybe the petroleum will be a better solvent for the track-munge than the alcohol.  

I ballasted mine the same way in the basement and never had any corrosion problems of any kind.

Some small areas of the track, mainly the joiners, have corroded in that familiar "statue of Liberty green". I think I may be able to clean those off with Q-Tips and cleaner. As for the track itself, I used my fingernail to scrape the gunk off the top of the rail followed by a rag a goo-gone, followed by a number of clean rags. Did a good job, obviously using my finer nail wasn't the most pleasant or most recommended way to do it but it did a pretty good job. Test run of a passenger train - no more (or VERY little) flickering from the cars. I'd say that is a start. 

I'll keep the group posted. Hope to get the inner loop and "yard" done this evening. My fingers permitting!

This is what I use to clean my Atlas track with out issues just a little on a rag and done!!

cleaning that green stuff off the joiners is not the problem, the electrical connection could potentially be compomised inside the joiner where you can't see. there had to be some contamanents somewhere to cause this, not matt medium itself.

I took some crappy pictures of a couple of sections. Just to give an idea of the issues. NOT happy about this whatsoever. The trains RUN FINE but I'm concerned about future problems down the road. 

Its hard to tell from the photos, it just looks like pools of dried glue.

FWIW, I mix up my own "matte medium" with elmers white glue diluted with water. I've found the empty elmers glue bottle makes a fantastic applicator for the glue.

You can let it flow out of the orange nozzle and keep the glue on the ballast away from the rails. It gets more glue, where you want it, instead of where you don't like the rail heads.

Our modular club uses Atlas track and we've seen the green stuff too. We use a Dremel tool with the quick-connect arbor. They make a Scotchbrite buffing wheel. It does a great job cleaning up Atlas track.

As for Matte Media, our experience is it leave a white film on the ballast after a while. We use a mix of a bottle of Woodland Scenic glue, 1/2 bottle Elmers, 1/2 bottle warm water with a few drops of dish soap.

Gilly 

Gilly,

Any long standing issues as a result of the "green"?

I just was downstairs scrapping a few sections of this "corrosion". I'm leaning to Rick's idea of this being dried glue. I used Brennan's Ballast - great stuff from a great guy. He uses small pieces of a teal/green-ish color stone mixed in. I wonder if this matte medium is "bleeding" the color from these teal/green stones....

I clean the Steel and Nickel-Silver Rails on my Atlas O Track with a pink eraser, a track eraser, and Isopropyl Alcohol.

Andrew

Becareful with GOOF OFF, IT IS AS STRONG AS ACETONE!!!

Sorry to hear of your troubles.  I have both Fastrack and Atlas-O, and I use WD-40 on paper towels to clean both track makes.   I make sure to leave a very fine film of oil on the rails as protection.   Not so much that it comes even close to traction issues.

I have found a few spots of corrosion on pieces of Atlas O nickel silver Track. Out of the hundreds of pieces of the track that I have had, I believe 3 had these spots. That is straight out of the box, no ballasting or anything.

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the kind words. I have never seen any color bleeding or leaching out from my ballast. I always use white glue and water but Matte Medium shouldn't be any different.

Matt,

I have over 900 feet of Atlas track on my layout, most of it is ballasted, and after about two years, I have not noticed any corrosion anywhere.

To ballast, I first spread the ballast (with a Ballast King), then spray it with 50/50 water/alcohol, followed with 50/50 water/Elmer’s white glue which I drip over all the ballast and track ties. Once all the ballast is rather saturated with the glue mix, I wipe off the rails with a rag with alcohol. I finish by wiping the rails dry with a dry rag.

I don’t clean the track very often, perhaps once every three months or so and only the track that is easily reachable. When I do get around to cleaning the track, I do so with a pad soaked with alcohol or contact cleaner.  I have no problems running the trains, and by the way, I did not make any effort to remove the black off the center rails, and the ones that appear bare now is simply through use.

The pictures below show some of my track.

Good luck!

Alex

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that this stuff is the Scenic Express Matte Medium that has dried on the sides of the rails. I've scraped parts of it off and it has a green tinge to it leaving the rail clean. I also pealed back the sides (carefully) of a few joiners and they are clean on the "inside". 

The Matte Medium has a paint smell to it, not that it concerns me but I glued the ballast previously with the Woodland stuff, no coloration issues. The MM colored some areas. I think it has a bit more mixed into than glue and water. 

My entire layout is done with diluted matt medium, purchase by the gallon from Scenic Express, and I have NEVER had the "issues" you SEEM to have. If your electrical contacts, and DCS, Legacy, nor TMCC signals are affected, why worry about it?

I also ballasted with the MM and did not have any issues.  I wiped my rails down immediately after applying it so as not to have any dry on the rail heads and cause conductivity issues.  The glue if not thoroughly mixed can leave behind heavy areas or clumps for lack of a better term, I also mixed mine with warm water which seemed to help with the dilution.  

If scraping is working well, then you might try picking up a couple 'plastic' putty knifes from your local hardware store.  You could spit them length wise and fashion a couple pieces into plastic 'pics'.

We would use these for cleaning up paint overspray on metal and some hardwoods back in the day.  The plastic would give before it would scratch those surfaces.

Good luck!  Your new track, ballasting and grass are looking great

Robert

Matt:

It looks very nice, even if it is not to your liking as-is (the corrosion issue).

Let me throw out a very off the wall idea, but it has some relevance for others and perhaps my question will be answered as a "no" by you but will be applicable to someone in the future should they research the topic.

THE question:  Have you had any drywall work done in the room where the track in in the last 5-8 years?

Chinese made drywall has been very problematic.  If you Google the term, you can see what I mean.  One of the thing it causes is metal to change colors and/o deteriorate.  The environmental release by the drywall, even if painted, is annoying a a minimum and can be more serious to some.

So, if you had any drywall work done in or near the room where the trains are kept, it might explain (possibly) to apparent corrosion.  And if you have definitively isolated it to the glue or something else, then my theory is not applicable to your situation - but it could be down the road for someone else.

I used Dennis' ballast on my layout and did not encounter any leaching of the stone colors.  I used a 50/50 white glue and water mix, too.

I ran into a different situation a few weeks ago where the Ross track developed rust after I cleaned it with Isopropyl alcohol.  Once I noticed the rust, I double-checked the bottle and broke into curses when I found it was labeled "91%" on the front but "70%" on the back.  I'm sure the bottle had 70% in it; not 91%.  By the end of the week, I'll have the last of that mess cleaned up using a 3M "green pad", some elbow grease and a wipe down with a rag (with a single track-width size drip-drop of RailZip on the rag added every few feet of wiping).  That method has worked so far for cleaning the two mainlines and a small yard.

I can firmly say the glue/matte medium is the culprit. I have a few extra pieces of Atlas track and used one as a test, soaked it in MM, no ballast, etc overnight. In the morning, same results as the permanent stuff on the layout. It too cleaned up almost perfectly, despite some heavy elbow grease like I had to use on the layout. No corrosion, just the glue which appears to have a green-ish tint to it when scrapped off. That test track is back in my pile for a future project. 

Alex

What did you use for ballast and what is "Ballast king"

Thanks

Dale H

Ballast king