Maintenance of locomotives

Clean the wheels?

I think you should thoroughly clean off the old grease from the drive gears first, then apply a little good quality grease.  I did that to a 671, 681, and two #60 trolleys, and that was a great start prior to further cleaning/lubing.

I recently did this on all my locos.

1st thing I did was clean the gunk off.  For diesels I cleaned the wheels and the gears then put the trucks in an ultrasonic cleaner to remove any remaining debris.  Then I lubed.

The ultrasonic cleaner I have is not big enough to put an entire steam loco chassis in so I cleaned as much as I could off using tweezers, cloth, paper towel, whatever it took to do the job.  Then I lubed.  I probably over lube but so far have had no problems operating.

My cat gets on the layout, surprised (shouldn't be) at the amount of cat hair that gets wrapped around every moving part.  That's where a fine set of tweezers come in.  Now I'm using a Shark handheld vacuum once a month to clean debris off the track.

Oh yeah...on diesels remove the truck sideframes 1st so you can get to the gears.

Would be a really good idea NOT to run your engines with 20-yr old batteries until such batteries are replaced in kind or with a BCR, etc.                                Cheap insurance for your circuit boards.

So the BCR - just as simple as swap out and keep moving?

@msp posted:

So the BCR - just as simple as swap out and keep moving?

Yes sir !  I put them in my all 4 of my MTH PS-2 engines

To clean the wheels & rollers, I use Q-Tips & naphtha. Evaporates fast, just use in a well ventilated area.

Taking off the side frames is easy and if the engine is 20 years, I would change the tires to avoid having to do it later.

@msp posted:

So the BCR - just as simple as swap out and keep moving?

Yes. Plug and play! Then no more worries about batteries!