Hello,
I am in the process of cleaning all of the wheels on my passenger car sets. Does anyone know of a method to cleans these wheels that is efficient and faster than having to turn each wheel manually. Thanks for any responses.
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I am two rail so I do not need to deal with the center roller pickups. Being fundamentally lazy I look for quick and easy ways to do things. For passenger car wheels spray a paper towel with the solvent of your choice, lay it across the track, run the car back and forth until no more dirt shows on the paper towel. Takes me about 10 seconds/car for clean wheels and it cleans all the wheels.
That’s a tough one. Ogauge 3rail creates an awful amount of thick black gunk on the wheels. I have to use a small razor blade knife for scraping followed with a rub of goo gone. Wipe dry and be done. Unfortunately every wheel gets this and it’s messy.
I have two pieces of junk 30-inch Fastrack. I put a paper towel double thickness on the first one and wet it with Goo Gone. I push the car back and forth moving the paper towel to a clean spot every so often. When I feel it's clean I run it across the other piece of track with a new piece of paper towel to remove any residual dirt and Goo Gone.
@Train Nut posted:I have two pieces of junk 30-inch Fastrack. I put a paper towel double thickness on the first one and wet it with Goo Gone. I push the car back and forth moving the paper towel to a clean spot every so often. When I feel it's clean I run it across the other piece of track with a new piece of paper towel to remove any residual dirt and Goo Gone.
Goo Gone is one of the worst things to use. There is much research on this topic. I will give you a link that has a lot of links in it leading to articles about cleaning track & wheels.
Tom Stoltz
in Maine
@Tom Stoltz posted:Goo Gone is one of the worst things to use. There is much research on this topic. I will give you a link that has a lot of links in it leading to articles about cleaning track & wheels.
Tom Stoltz
in Maine
I've seen the Articles. Not sure if I agree or disagree with them. Regardless, it was to do with conductivity. I don't really care about conductivity on rolling stock wheels.
I use a Dremel with a wire wheel and Q Tips with Acetone,works Great.
Mikey
@mikey posted:I use a Dremel with a wire wheel and Q Tips with Acetone,works Great.
Mikey
acetone is also a polar solvent. It might clean however you will clean more often with the polar solvent than the non-polar solvents.
read the article:
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws...ne/index.html?page=9
Tom Stoltz
in Maine
I use my Dremel with the wire wheel and nothing else. No solvents to worry about, and it'll clean them in a jiffy. If you REALLY want them cleaned up, try a Cratex wheel on them, they'll look like new. 
Dremel with a buffing pad. I also lube the wheels/journals as needed.
I might add that my friend Chuck who was a certified Lionel and MTH service person cleaned truck wheels and the third rail pick up rollers with his strictly brass wire wheel on his bench grinder. No additional solvents. Worked great for him. I witnessed his using this method countless times.
@Seth Thomas posted:I might add that my friend Chuck who was a certified Lionel and MTH service person cleaned truck wheels and the third rail pick up rollers with his strictly brass wire wheel on his bench grinder.
Hopefully, the folks here won't have to have all those certifications to clean their passenger car wheels. 
@Seth Thomas posted:I might add that my friend Chuck who was a certified Lionel and MTH service person cleaned truck wheels and the third rail pick up rollers with his strictly brass wire wheel on his bench grinder. No additional solvents. Worked great for him. I witnessed his using this method countless times.
I’m not an in this area, however I did spend several weeks reading all the articles and reader’s comments connected with this topic. What I got from all of this is there are many ‘traditional’ cleaning methods that appear to work, but that actually can make the problem worse. Things like abrasive erasers – BrightBoy is one (I’ve thrown mine out), or sandpapers coarser than 600, anything that scratches is only very short term and in the long run doing more harm than good. Like polar solvents, these are things that should be avoided.
But if cleaning wheels is really your hobby – go for it. I personally do not enjoy cleaning wheels. I still sometimes use Goo-Gone, but finish off using mineral spirts. I also have a lot of plastic wheels which are really a no, no for clean track, but I can’t change every wheelset in my collection, so I am condemned to cleaning more than I would like to.
Tom Stoltz
in Maine
I agree gunrunnerjohn that a certified shingle on the wall is not required to clean freight wheels or clean anything moving parts from cars or engines.
At the same time we both could mention that a Dremel tool and a bench grinder would be required for both suggestions.
I was just giving credit due to my good friend for my suggestion about use of the brass wire wheel.
I guess I need to add gunrunner that I am not certified in any product which is mentioned in this thread. Nor certified in Lionel nor MTH nor do I represent any business or manufacturer.
In fact, let’s just forget everything that I mentioned about any suggestions about how to clean truck wheels, metal or plastic.
Thanks
I don't have any plastic wheels except on my magnetic debris pickup car, the huge magnet attracted the metal wheels so strongly that they couldn't rotate! I've never cleaned those, and I doubt I ever will.
The wire brush works well for the metal wheels. 
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One more method: Use a Dremel drum sander mandrel at very slow speed in Dremel tool. It works great on wheels secured to the axles. It's a bigger challenge with postwar wheels not secured to axles.
Set up in cradle. Use index cards cut to fit for protection against spatter.
Clean with denatured alcohol which leaves no residue. Dip folded paper towel in bowl of cleaner. Hold against wheel while spinning with the mandrel on the other wheel. If I wait too long for this cleaning I may have some grime the needs removing by hand before alcohol cleaning. I use an old paring knife that has a nice stiff blade for scraping off the grimy ridgesl
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