Displaying Tinplate

Well, I don't have any particular schedule for dusting the trains or the shelves.  They are on open  shelves, btw.  My other hobby is Ham Radio, so what I do is while listening to the radio, or maybe while engaged in some digital radio activity (which doesn't require me to be holding a microphone) I will dust a shelf and the trains on it.  Next time, I do a different shelf.  I guess they all get dusted at least twice  a year....more frequently if there is a lot of activity on the ham radio frequencies due to sunspot activity.

I keep most trains in glass cases; I can leave them for years and years without cleaning. It helps to keep the door of the train room closed when you are not there. And when I pick one to run a light dusting with a soft make up brush like this suffices:

Regards

Fred

Every no and then I do a light Swifer dusting over the trains on my opened aluminum shelves especially if I'm having visitors.  Otherwise most of the fleet gets roatated enough that I'll give whatever I'm running a quick dusting over the roofs before I run them. 

I cannot/will not do this living in earthquake country.

Over the years, I've seen photos of collections displayed on open shelves in earthquake country. The owners put small pins along the front edge of the display shelves to prevent the trains from falling off if there is a quake or tremors.
Ward Kimble may have been one of them.

Well, I don't live in earthquake country but when my three Grandchildren were in their Munchkin stage they were as dangerous as an earthquake to display shelf trains.  My approach back then was to make my own shelving out of 8 foot long oak 1x4s which I stained in Cherry.  I then attached 8 foot long 4 inch high acrylic strips across the front of the shelves.  Anyone could still see the trains but they were impervious to curious darting little hands.  Also, even in South Jersey we have minor rumblings from time to time but so far so good.  Now that my Grand kids are a little bit older and a little less "spontaneous"  my newer train shelves are of the Glenn Snyder genre and again so far so good. 

My display trains are on 1. open shelving with plexiglass  covers removed for photographing) 2. beautiful commercial oak and glass shelving from Greenwood Products or 3. on a commercially made plexiglass cabinet with shelves and doors.

lewrail

Thanks everyone for your comments I really appreciate it

OkHiker- how are those plexiglass covers on there do you have rails on the top and bottom that they run along in just curious how they stay on there I like the way they look. Did you build these cabinets?

Joe Gozzo

My wife gave me stackable antique oak barrister bookcases for Christmas a few years back and they keep the display pieces relatively dust free. I have had to build multiple levels in each case to conserve space.

I, too, live in earthquake country, but figure the odds of the big one hitting anytime soon are pretty slim.  (Now watch... it'll hit tonight )

I'd like to build some nice display shelves similar to what Lewrail has shown above, but I'm forced to make do with shelf units from Ikea.  They handle the weight of the heavier items and have been with me for several years.

I don't have any experience with earthquakes, but dust...oh yah. I live in a pretty clean house, but the dust is a pain on the open shelving. We'll be downsizing in a couple years, at that point I'll build a new display system with plexi.

Tim

Boy that's beautiful stuff Tim. I have the 221 with the blue cars on my hit list for the future. Along with many others.

One of three shelf-units behind the layout:

We dust 'em off when we run 'em...

PD

same here

I consider dust as part of the natural weathering process.

Greg

Northwoods Flyer

My thoughts exactly and I am dusting-lazy!  :-)

BTW: AWESOME COLLECTIONS!

When I lived in Vienna, VA I had several walls of Milwaukee Road trains, the longest being about 30'.  The shelves were open so I needed to dust them as needed which turned out to be about two to three times a year.  Like Fred above, I used a soft makeup brush to loosen the dust.  In addition I used a shop vac to collect and remove the dust, which had accumulated on my trains.   When Arno stayed in my house during SGMA's participation in the WGHT Dulles, VA show, he took photos of what he called my "orange" wall.  Attached is one of his photos of what I called my "shrine" to The Milwaukee Road.

Bob Nelson

I cheat.  I use a small portable air compressor.  I also use soft brushes made for cleaning camera lenses by photographers that has a very tiny amount of polonium which is very slightly radioactive (it is a very weak amount of radiation) and they do a bang up job of getting rid of dust in small spaces.   They are made by Nuclear Products Company in El Monte California in a variety of widths from one inch to around 4 inches.