Good Track Cleaning Car?

I really like the solid brass CMX Products CMX 3 Rail "O" cleaner car. I can fill it with acetone, set it to drip at about 1 drop per second on the pad tray, no chance of slopping the fluid onto parts of the track I don't want it on, etc. And it uses easily changed cloth pads that you can buy or make out of corduroy or whatever.

Here's mine, nothing fancy but it gets the job done and it looks cool making it's rounds.

One wet and one dry followed by the Lionel postwar 3927 track cleaning car to mop and polish it all up. 

Paul

I'm not sure I'd like acetone anywhere near my trains, that stuff will lift a lot of paint types!

Take your pick  They all have good and bad points  I tend to like the Trackman 2000 the best

Wouldn't acetone also melt plastics? I'm thinking ties, plastic ballast base on Fastrack and Realtrax. It sounds dangerous.

One of the forum members made a set of plans and instructions on here to make a cleaning car from an old cheap freight car.

I hope he see's this and posts. I have his plans and like his design, it works well for me.
 They look similar to the units Serows shows in his post.

I sure won't let it near my stuff!

Well that's the thing. The acetone damp on the pad rubbing on the top of the rail is what I want. I've tried alcohol and it takes some time to dry or whatever. Acetone does a really fast cleaning job and dries in less than seconds. Also when putting the car away, it's clean and dry instantly. 

The key thing is that the brass car is perfectly tight and accurately able to put a drop a second or whatever works on the pad. So in my case, the solvent, whatever you use, is not going to get on the layout or as well not going to get on the engine or cars trailing when you are using it...cause the track is dry by the time they get there.

Better than this, if I could reach all the track easily, would be an old white sock with alcohol...but I can't.

I'm thinking about painting the brass as a tank car...maybe with an ACETONE ONLY sign on it's side

If acetone on the metal track top is not good or there is something better, let me know.

I am the designer.  It appears that Serows used my design.  I will send you the plans if you like.  You can email me.

.....

Dennis

I use Goo Gone on the front pad and do run the cleaning car about 5 times around the track.  Have no idea what the cloth is so off to JoAnns' on Wednesday with the cleaning car and will let the lady in patterns tell me. Have used the green 3M pads and they do work quite well in cleaning the track. Did away from the arcing (sic) which really surprised me as I am using MTH Real Trax

I'd like the plans, but email addresses are not visible right now.  Any chance you could post it somewhere like Photobucket?

My wife can't be in the same house with the scent of goo gone...one of the reasons I don't use it.

In the CMX car, our club uses Bestine.  It won't harm plastics and evaporates really quick.  It's also flammable, so beware!  Again, a slow drip should not be any problems.

When I was young I used to use Acetone (nail polish remover) to weld my plastic models together. It worked better than the plastic glues of the time. It does melt some plastics.  Al

I still believe in the R&L Lines Track Scrubber car.....

However at Train shows, our Club Track Cleaning needs of a nightly track scrub are

now met by using the 9" long fuzzy paint roller tubes (roller covers). With track fluid

poured on a 9" line down the fuzzy tube, the tube is slid down a rail pair (back &

forth) & then down the adjacent rail pair. Tube is then rotated slightly for a final dry

wipe....

Longitudinal paint roller "gliding" is  fast, friction free, super clean & a no finger

cut deal!!!   9" long Fuzzy paint roller tube cost a $1 a piece in 6 or 9 packs.......

In hard to get at layout locations....   the R&L Track scrubber car still fills the bill.

Dennis M from GBay, WI

I'd be interested in these plans too.  This looks like a cool MOW train.  Functional, too.

Eric S.

gandalf97us (at) yahoo (dot) com

Dennis, I'd appreciate a copy of the plans as well.  gunrunnerjohn <at> gmx.com

I have a home-built car like Paul (Serows) that works wonderfully. It's a flatcar carrying wooden blocks for weight -  with a Scotchbrite pad attached to the bottom of the car between the two trucks using two screws.  I either push it or pull it behind a train.

Dennis,
After manually cleaning my track yesterday I would greatly appreciate your plans.
Thanks.
bobfetterman(at)ymail(dot)com

Mee also please!!!    :-)

astroguy (at) nas (dot) com

I wouldn't mind having them.  Email should be in my profile but just in case:

mitchell (dot) eric (at) verizon (dot) net

I have the Trackman 2000.  I have nothing to compare it to so all I can do is relay my happiness, or lack of, with the cleaning car.

It's OK is the best thing that I can say.  Not great, not bad.

One "tip" that I discovered on my own, and one that I mentioned to Henry (or was it Hank?) is to put a boxcar behind the Trackman.  Without the trailing car I found that the pad would not recenter coming out of a curve.  Worse, while going around the curve the outer part of the pad wouldn't touch the outer rail.  Dragging a car behind cures both.

Based on a forumite's comment this past December about the Trackman, I tried what he does but am on the fence.  He puts Denatured on the pad before dragging it around.  When I tried I found that the track still needed a "dry" cleaning - if I ran a rag over the track it picked up all of the gunk that the Denatured loosened but left behind.

What else I learned on my own is to clean the pad often.  Just take paper towels or a rag and rub the black stuff off.  Since the same part of the pad touches the rail all of the time, all of the black stuff is concentrated in just 3 paths on the pad.  The rest of the pad is perfectly clean.

- walt

Me too!  I don't see any ability to PM Dennis from his profile. So, all I can do is say:

(zee) (e) (dee) (oh) (cee) (at) charter (dot) net.

Hey Gang!

I had saved Dennis' post of some time ago, outlining his car.  I have sent the PDF file of that post to all who asked for the plans.  Hope this helps you out.

C

I will append to this that there is an upgrade for Dennis' car.

Cut the handle off a 2.5" paintbrush then shorten the bristles to 1 or 1.5" length.

turn the coupler in on one end of the car and screw the brush onto that end.

This car must then be pushed around the layout, but it removes lots of loose stuff that can lay in the rails.

It's excellent for removing cat or dog hair. I hate that stuff in my wheels.

I saw an alternative I haven't made yet. A modified dust Buster mounted on the end of a flatcar to suck up the loose stuff. One of these days...

Dennis,you are correct my friend, I used the plans that you sent me and it works GREAT!!  Thanks again for taking the time to document your plans and sending them to me.

Paul

"After manually cleaning my track yesterday I would greatly appreciate your plans.
Thanks.
bobfetterman(at)ymail(dot)com"

Bob,

Yahoo wouldn't accept the email.  Let me know what ya wanna do.

C

OK,

Just had a "better idea."

I've attached the PDF.

C

That is AWESOME Charly! Thanks for sharing.

I can see this home made track cleaning car as a real timesaver. I usually take used Bounce dryer sheets and manually wipe down my Fastrack.

I don't have a permanent train table, just a double reverse looping single line running on the carpet in my home office (no one comes in here except for me so my trains are safe on the floor).

Thanks for posting Charly.  Another project which is ultimately easier than wiping rails by hand.

Hi Charly,

Your "better idea" works great. Email works great too--when it works. Sorry my address didn't work when you tried that.

Thanks for the PDF.

Bob

Thank you, Charly!

Regarding another suggestion, and has been said, let's remember:

"Acetone should always be handled, stored, and used with precautions against fire and explosion. Acetone is a flammable liquid with flammable limits of 2.6 to 12.8 vol% at 25°C.  Solutions of acetone and water can be flammable. Since acetone vapors travel with air currents, they can be ignited by flames and sparks at locations remote from the site at which the material is being handled."

Alex

Acetone is just not something you should normally be using, and since it attacks far too many things my trains and tracks are made of, I don't use it for cleaning.

 I also like the CMX Products all brass car. Very well made with easily changed inexpensive pads. I have the NE Trains car as well as a Centerline. The CMX works the best. I use automotive brakleen made by CRC. The red can version is non flammable. I have Gargraves and Ross. It maybe harmfull to some plastics so I'd try it first to see if it has any affect on other track systems. Set to a slow drip it does a great job. After a few times around I tested the track with my Centerline car which features a white roller. After a once around the layout the roller had no residue on it whatsoever.

I've used brake cleaner to remove paint, so that's another compound that doesn't get used around the trains!

My experience is that all of the liquid cleaners degrade traction tires, and leave a film behind on the track. The best cleaning car in my opinion is the Lionel track cleaning car with a Scotchbrite pad instead of the cotton pad. Run it dry. The best track cleaner is the 0-5-0 I was born with.

The Bestine sounds interesting...I think I found that it is Heptane? Is that correct?

Yep, I have my Lionel one modified, but it's tripping my TMCC doghouse, so I have to figure out what the issue is.  I also like the home rolled one presented previously in the thread, I may slap one of those together as well.