Several folks have asked about this in the last few weeks and particularly today when I mentioned I ran it behind my cleaning cars I use, particularly when they have new pads that are run dry, which tend to drop bits of fine debris from them for the first few minutes they run.
I made this about three years ago. The trucks are from some diesel or whatever - I think maybe a cannibalized MTH Veranda, sans motors of course - point is they are very heavy - much heavier than six wheel trucks for a passenger car, giving the thing some weight and stability. The body is made of regular plywood and the vacuum is the guts of a dustbuster cut and made of fit. Air is sucked up from the back through the nozzle into the wooden box where it is drawn down through a very fine mesh filter that stops most dust and dirt, and through the dustbuster to be expelled through the vents (facing the camera) that you see in the body of what's left of it (just below the motor). The top of the box unscrews and removes to clean out debris.
Power is provided by a rectifier (inside the box, I figured why not cool it with airflow, too?) using track power.
This thing works very well. I run it about once a month and it picks up about a half thimble full of stuff per hundred feet of track in only four of five passes. Most of it is dust although I looked at one batchunder a microscope, and while I have no training in CSI techniques, some of it looked like black paint flakes -- maybe new locos flake paint off their innards/underside? Anyway, it also picks up the , with the occasional bit of "vegetation that came lose, etc.
Good job. I am going to put this on my list of "to do's". I get a lot of light weight debris from my unfinished cellar ceiling.. Thanks.
What a great idea.
