Track cleaning cars

I have a Northeast Trains cleaning car that's only use is around one of our Christmas trees each holiday season.  And the only reason I use it there is because I can't reach the track at the back of the tree.  And, since this is an edited response now, I will second the comment below about needing three hands to change the pads.  This is one of the reasons I use it only around the Christmas tree.

Beyond that, the only track cleaning car I swear by is the proverbial old "0-5-0".  A good hand cleaning with a clean rag and alcohol works better than any track cleaning car made.  Provided, of course, every area on your layout can be reached by hand.

Curt

Pat's Trains (a forum sponsor) was offering track cleaning cars a while back, but I haven't seen them advertised lately in any of their posts?

Take a look at this thread

 

I have one of Pat's Cars a long PRR Gondola, but need to look for something a bit shorter as it is too long and doesn't make contact with O36 FasTrack curves.

 

Pat suggestions for a another York Pickup?

I have tried three different ones over the years so here is my take.

 

First is the one made by Northeast Trains. Works well due to a lot of friction and rubbing of the cleaning pads on the rails. These sell for $89. Only negative is changing the cleaning pads is awkward. Need three hands. Northeast Trains

 

 

Second is the Centerline car. This car is about $120. It also works okay but the cleaning pads are rolling free and frankly they do not apply enough pressure on the rails to get them really clean.

 

Third is this one which was being sold through Weaver but I believe it can be purchased directly from MNP This one is very expensive (around $175) but the design would suggest it would do a very good job cleaning the track. It does but we had problems with it because the cleaning pads would occasionally get caught going over the switches (Ross) and the car would derail. As is always the case, the derailments would happen at the most difficult spot to reach on the layout

 

 

 

On balance, if I were to start over, I would go with the Northeast trains car. I don't think the other two do that much of a better job to justify the added cost.

 

 

Great info John and everyone I will definitely check out Northeast trains

I have two track cleaning cars by R&R Lines.  The first is a covered hopper car with a cratex roller which rolls along the rails .... pretty ineffective results.

 

The second is a flat car with two 2 inch paint roller ( easy to replace by going to any paint dept at a hardware store ) which roll along the rails.  Is somewhat effective if you dip the first roller in Googone and let the second roller ( dry roller ) wipe the rail.  The flat car is of RR Lines design and is pretty heavy.  I use this car to wipe rails in tunnels and hard to get at areas.... otherwise I use a scotchbite pad and good old elbow grease on the reachable areas.

Our group uses two flat cars, which were made by an inactive member, that have velcro & scotch-brite mounted underneath the flatcar frame. The flatcar carries a little weight on top for positive contact. As far as using alcohol on the tracks,we used to use it but.... we have a guy in the group who is like a bull in a china shop. 

At one of our shows, he takes one of his loco's and oils the axles and gears. Mind you no one is paying attention to him. His time slot comes up to run his train and the loco has about 10 passenger cars behind it. After about 20 minutes or so I can see he's frustrated, and he already has a short fuse, so he asks me to help him find out why the loco won't pull the cars. I tell him switch loco's for now( little did I know that he oiled this one also). He tries the other loco and he get's the same results, no movement. It's hard enough to hear in the expo center with all the trains running and people talking, so I figured he's got 2 bad loco's, until I put my hand on the loco and I feel it vibrating. I look to the side of the loco and the wheels are slipping, bad.

Pulled the loco from the track and looked at the wheels, and they were soaked with oil. He might as well have made a salad with all the oil oozing off of the wheels; same with the other loco. My heart sank at this point because there had to be oil all over track 2 and the layout is 40'x50'.

Bring in the track cleaning crews with the alcohol & rags! (This is where it gets good). We spend 15 minutes cleaning the track of it's oil and I tell "Joe" not to use those loco's until he removes the oil from the wheels of both loco's because anyone after you will have the same slipping problem. "Joe" gets a bright idea and wants to speed up the track cleaning process but is out of loco's and decides he wants to borrow a fellow members loco to pull around track 2 with the flat car & scotch-brite. He asks everyone if he can borrow a loco, but they all know how he is with his equipment and they all refuse him. Finally a gullible member gives "Joe" a switcher & he puts it on the track. "Joe" takes the scotch-brite off of the bottom of the flat car, puts the scotch-brite on a table & pours the alcohol(70%) onto the pad, and it's dripping, puts the pad back onto the flatcar, puts the flatcar behind the switcher and powers up the train. The train moves 3 ft. and there is a spark under the flatcar (derail) which causes a fire on the scotch-brite. "Joe" panics, grabs the flatcar as I'm watching all this(and Mt. Vesuvius is about to explode with laughter),pulls the scotch-brite pad off while singeing his fingers, drops the pad and starts stomping on the pad along with the flaming alcohol all over his shoe bottom. The pad is stuck to the bottom of his shoe, he looks up at me with a silly grin , and I lost it;couldn't contain myself anymore along with all the other members. I'll say one thing his fire dance was something to watch!

The poor guy that loaned him the switcher nearly lost it from the fire, plus learned a valuable lesson that day about loaners(nothing serious)  Our "Joe"is the new FIRE MARSHALL BILL and we have done away with ALCOHOL.

                                    Steam Forever

                                         John

                    Co-ordinator of "The Raritan Valley Hi-Railers"

                             Catch the layout on facebook

I have a brass drop-center flat set up with two wells.  In one I have a roller with a rag glued to it, and in the other I have a block with some 320 wet-or-dry sandpaper on the bottom.  I put a few drops of Wahl clipper oil on the roller, and the sand paper comes along behind and polishes.  Best of all, it looks like a deep well flat car, complete with sprung six wheel trucks.  If I decide to convert it to a scale freight car all I have to do is cover the two wells.

I've got one of the Northeast Trains cleaning cars.  I have to agree with John (tr18), it works quite well.  I have found that if you use a small piece of masking tape, installation of the "pads" is much easier.  I use pieces of cotton T-Shirts and I haven't experienced any problems.

 

Chief Bob (Retired)

read this thread track cleaning

I use old socks, tee shirts and alcohol to clean track by hand where it is easily reached. I have several areas that are a little difficult to reach and long ago tried the Dennis cleaning car and then purchased a centerline cleaning car  I have done a few things to make it more effective. I cap the ends of the paint rollers and load the center of the roller with washers for weight. This helps the roller to rotate slower than it would just rolling along at speed, if that makes sense.  After the alcohol roller sequence, I drop in a fresh roller with washers, but squeeze a piece of sponge to wedge between the roller and the side of the opening to prevent the roller from rotating.  This makes the roller a pad to slide along and further wipe the track.  It has worked well for me, but old fashion elbow effort before hand on the track and loco and rolling stock wheels really helps as well.  Even though there have been many track cleaning threads, I still like to read the rethreads just in case there is a new technique.  And I enjoy seeing the new cleaning cars. 

 

Edit:  I just remembered that I have also placed a piece of scotch brite pad into the opening that is wedged tight with a weighted roller to scour the track as an experiment. I especially found the alcohol and scotch brite pad useful with elbow effort after I completed my scenic do over earlier this year to clean off paint and glue residue. So the centerline car can be used with different cleaning pad/roller materials.   

I took an old Lionel MPC junker boxcar and tacked a few blocks of 2"x2" steel to its frame, replaced the plastitrucks with good sprung trucks and stuffed a kinda alcohol soaked scotchbrite sponge underneath. The sponge was too tall to fit, the steel kept it tight to the track and the trucks soaked up the discrepancies in my track laying abilities. 

 

Follow that up with a cloth under another car and it worked just fine.

 

 

I use Centerline track cleaning cars for years. The results are great. I had most of the others and sold them. Centerline works for me.

For O gauge, my Trackman 2000 has never let me down but unfortunately it's no longer being made!

Will the centerline work on 2 rail as the wheels would have to be insulated.

I have the North East Trains version but have used Scotch Brite  pads instead of the ones included. Never really have been too impressed. I clean my track by hand and only use the cleaning car for places I can't reach, figuring it's better then nothing. 

Willygee, yes it will. This is the two rail version.

Regarding the Centerline car, I never really understood why it was made with such a heavy frame. Meaning that none of that weight is used to apply downward pressure the the roller (most people used heavy washers, quarters or BB's inside of the roller tube to add weight) and it's not needed to keep the roller moving forward since the rectangular opening captures the roller fairly well.

Seems like it could have been made of relatively lightweight plastic.

I agree the centerline cars need some resistance to be really effective. I added quarters to the rollers and it helped. I also experimented with one car to add additional resistance which works great. Then I built two others of my own where I add a roller with one quarter inside of it to add resistance and they work really well also. You want the cars to scrub the track and not just roll over the dirt. What I like about the Centerline setup is that when it hits something like a point, it will roll forward over it easily. Here are some photos to show a little train I built up. You can see the difference in how much more the cars pick up with resistance added to them. I usually run the train dry but sometimes I've added a little alcohol to the fiirst roller. The first car in the last photo is a magnet car.

 

 

At my club we use the centerline cars. I like them a lot. We use two cars. The one in front is soaked in alcohol and the second one is dry. We have lead weights in the rollers. They work great. After a few laps, the track is clean. You can see in the picture that they are picking up a lot of dirt. I buy small paint rollers at the hardware store to replace the rollers in the cars.

 

 

Centerline directions

 

Several years ago, my wife bought the North East Track cleaning car for me.  The solution we came up with for the cleaning pads was to use the thin selfing sticking pantiliners.  One liner will cover both metal pads.  Cut to size, stick them on, and you are good to go.  Easy to remove.

 

Chris

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I run home-made track wiper cars on most of my trains, including N - HO - HOn30 - S - O gauges. I use clean denim cloth cut from old jeans as a disposable wiper material. I know they work because they get dirty. In the long run the track wipers minimize the need to clean wheels (which is a real chore) and it ensures very reliable no-stutter operation.

 

Most hobbyists will wait until they have dirty track problems and then want some quick high-power remedy. My method is to use track wipers as regular maintenance.

 

There are many different ways to make home-made track wiper cars. I've made them for prewar Lionel cars and Marx 6-inch tin cars and Postwar Lionel. I favor Postwar Lionel gondolas because the fishbelly frame makes the wiper attachment less obvious. You can use a metal plate with two guide pins into the car floor and attach the disposable denim wipers to that. Watch out that they don't snag on switch points - not a problem for me.

 

I used to first run a special train with a track wiper car, but eventually I made extra wiper cars and put one on most trains so I can just run any train without special preparations. Scale purists would object to the appearance, but I find them extremely practical.

 

I will admit that my house seems to be somewhat dusty due to country living and wood stove. Ideally a cleaner environment reduces the need for track cleaning, but O-gauge equipment also tends to leak trace lubricants and possibly smoke fluid onto the rails.

 

Second pic shows a track wiper under a BEEP loco.

 

I built a transfer caboose for a friend to cover one of these. He just leaves it there all the time while he switches out cars.

 

I have a Centerline car which I load with alcohol.....followed by 2 Northeast cars to with the alcohol-wet rails...........

 

Elbow grease still works the best, however......

 

Peter

Here is mine - same idea, but looks a little like a flat car.

 

 

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned the CMX track cleaner or the lionel made car with the twin rotating brush heads.

Here's my version of the Dennis Special, with a 3 lb. weight. A WBB GP-9 is used to haul it. I believe that I'm the 202nd forum member to have been sent Dennis's instructions.

 

Nice homemade cleaners guys.

Denatured alcohol is recommended as the cleaning agent in these cars, but I have found just plain ammonia on a cloth over the track, rub, let dry is hard to beat.  The ammonia cuts the oil-grease-smoke fluid right off the track.  Grab some out of your laundry room and give it a quick try...

There is no substitute for the 0-5-0 with Brightboy.

in my opinion after the first few feet any track cleaning car becomes a track dirt spreader car. nothing works like a little elbow grease

although it cleans well, I have witnessed a spark/fire thing happen when using alcohol, not a fun thing. non flammable electrical cleaner is now the solvent of choice.

I would be careful with ammonia if you have nickel-silver or brass track. Ammonia eats copper and these materials both contain copper. However, the household cleaners with ammonia might not have enough ammonia content make a difference? Not sure actually how much ammonia content is needed to start degrading the copper? But, I would use any ammonia products with caution on that type of track.

next time you are in san diego on a Tuesday stop by and ask for me.  I will show you that your statement is incorrect.

Try a "little" elbow grease on 1,000 feet of track. I've done it and the results are good and true, but so is the track cleaning train with allot less effort.

I can show you how to make a good track cleaning car for less than $5 bucks.  I have sent photos, a drawing, and instructions to 210 Forum members over the past several years.  It is always best to start with clean track and it does come from the factory dirty too. Then an occasional run of a track cleaning car will keep it in satisfactory condition.

 

If you would like my plans and photos I can email them to you. My email is in my profile.

 

Dennis

 

when you can pass the white rag test then you can say it works. the only method I have found that will pass the white rag test is to manually wipe down the track using a clean side of the rag every few feet. no track cleaning car can change its pad every few feet to a clean spot. when some one invents a car that can do then then I am in.