I have three commercially made track cleaning cars. All use a wet or dry pad to clean the track, and they do an adequate job. But I can always make the track cleaner and shinier if I go ahead and clean it by hand with a track cleaning eraser like a Walther Brightboy, using a lot of elbow grease. That takes a lot of time and, ugh, elbow grease, which is always in short supply at my home.
The car below is a track cleaning car I made from an MTH ore car that applies a Brightboy eraser twith “a lot of elbow grease.” It works well. I think any O-Gauge ore car would work as well in this application. I used an MTH ore car because of all the different ones I had, it had the tightest, smoothest swiveling trucks and by far lowest friction wheel bearings. I wasn’t and am still not sure if that matters, but I decided not to take a chance when I set out to make this car.
The car is simple in concept and operation and not difficult to make. A lot of weight held in a weight bin – one and a half pounds – pushes down on a plunger that is holding a Brightboy eraser flat on the track. The car holds the weight bin and keeps it centered on and atop a plunger while that weight really pushes that Brightboy eraser onto the track. A guide tube in the bottom of the car keeps the eraser steadied and flat against the track surfaces.
The next few photos show the car disassembled, with the modifications made of white styrene. (After these photos were taken I painted all those white pieces flat black so they disappear from view when the car is operating).
The weight bin holds 1.5 lbs of wheel weights, which does a good job of really pressing it down on the track. This car works well but creates a lot of drag – as much as a long train, so I use a pair of Lionchief Plus SD60s – heavy, two motor diesels – to pull it.
The car works well, if slowly. It takes about thirty passes to clean visibly cloudy track to shiny new, and I ran it for fifty to get the track really shiny. At a scale 40 mph, that meant running it for about an hour and a half to fully clean and polish my Mainline #1, which is 135 feet around. The eraser was hardly worn in that time. Not sure how long it will last but I can flip it over and use the other side when it is worn, and I have more if and when.
I am completely satisfied both with this track cleaning car, and the project that built it. It is so satisfying when a project works out perfectly, as this one does.
