I laid the Kato track on the benchwork today and ran my first test locomotive, an Atlas Burlington SD9. It ran as smooth as I expected. I will be adding the Kato V-2, V-3 and V-6 sets to the layout. My question now is how frequently should I clean the track and is the NO-OX-ID A-Special- Electrical Contact Grease and an old t-shirt all that I need? Dave
Nice to see one of those layouts. I found my remaining N gauge engines and cars so I went looking at Kato tracks last night. It should fit on a 6'x28.2" fold up table. I still have an A&B SW1200 set with two flatbeds with log loads to run. The rest went else where back in '04. Of course the engines have the colors and emblems for Wisconsin Central Ltd. Rich
Nice! Passing sidings like that open up all kinds of possibilities... You might think about moving the siding to the inside, to avoid the S-curve coming out of the loop end curves, onto the diverging route curve of the turnout. But for fairly short locos and railcars, it likely won't make much difference. And for a single loco, it makes no difference whatsoever.
love kato track make me wanna get a simple track setup just to play with while im building. as far as cleaning i my self do not like no-ox i had many problems with that stuff and im still trying to get it off. i use crc cleaner and a cloth . and every now a then (year or so of running trains ) ill use 1600 or 2000 grit sand paper on the rails. works great so far. i have one car that has 2000 grit paper on the bottom it runs all over. always shiny rails
Kato tracks have some kind of "magic sauce" in their metallurgy makeup. They don't really get as dirty as often as the other brands. If you run your trains often, you probably won't need to clean it. But it you do, use liquids like mineral spirit or WD-40 Contact Cleaner (NOT the lubricant/anti-seize). Try to avoid abrasives of any kind to prevent micro scratches on the tracks which eventually hold dirt in.
As far as Dielectric Constant.. WD-40 contact cleaner 1.9 Mineral Spirits 2.1 WD-40 (Regular) 2.4 IPA 18.0 There is nothing wrong with using regular WD-40..... Once a year I wipe down my track with a light coating of regular WD-40 and then wipe it down again with a dry cloth. I dont have locomotives stalling or lights flickering due to momentary contact lose with the rails. I dont get nearly any 'gunk' on a rag when wiping the track down every few months due to the layout getting dusty from being in an RV.
