Our club received a donation that included N gauge freight cars with wheels that badly need cleaning. Any suggestions? (I have a home made setup for engine wheel cleaning, but those are powered wheels.)
The only method I know is the tedious one ... while holding the car upside down and gripping the truck, gently turn each axle while holding a dental pic or similar device against the flange/tread of each wheel. This chips the crud off the treads. I would be scared of using any solvent because of possible damage to plastic wheels or to the insulation on metal wheels.
Try Rubbing alcohol; 91% from a WalMart, or Denatured Alcohol. Works wonders! Just roll the car over a cloth soaked in it, and drape it over tracks, and roll away!
Earlier this year, N scale magazine did an article about a wheel cleaner for locos and cars. It works in any scale. I built one and it DOES work. It consists of a piece of track mounted on a board. The board has holes drilled through it for a big staple shaped piece of brass wire to hold down strips of Handi-Wipes. You put your favorite liquid cleaner on the Handi-wipe, (mine is Simple Green all purpose cleaner), and just roll the car back and forth on the track over the towel. I use canned air to blow the wheels dry. For locos you can either wire pigtails from the rails to alligator clips to get track power. Or use an old cheap power pack mounted right to the board like I did. This has saved me countless hours of taking wheels on and off like I used to do.
One method is to mount a rubber wheel on a slow rpm motor, so the wheel is positioned where you can hold the truck in one hand and bring one wheel to bear gently against the rotating rubber wheel. This will rotate the car's wheel, allowing you to use your other hand to hold a tooth pick, or other non metal object against the opposit wheel of the axle to scrape off the crud. The safe thing is that if you do happen to apply too much pressure with the tooth pick, the rubber wheel will simply slip and not spin one of the car's wheels on its axle. It seems easiest to do both front and rear wheels on one side, then turn the truck and do the other two. Plastic wheels build up a charge of static electricity that attracts dust onto the wheel as it slips going around curves while current is running through the rails. Moisture from the air, oil from your fingers, and bearings on rolling stock combine to form a goo that causes the dust particals to cling. This gets compacted as the wheel rolls along. This goo finally gets to be about the consistency of toe jam, and is an insulator. Professionally speaking, it is not a good idea to rely on the use of plastic wheels any longer than it takes to sell the car to the unsuspecting public. You can always tell when it is time to clean those plastic wheels, because that is when you begin to smell toe jam! Your wife or mother is a great help in this respect, because she can smell toe jam many hours before you do. She will also make you change your sox more often than your wheels will need cleaning. Your life may be misserable, but you will have clean wheels! [ 16. August 2002, 15:20: Message edited by: watash ]
I've found alcohal to be a half-haerted cleaner at best (91% or otherwise) , for really bad build up I use WD40 on a papertowel across the track and rolling the car on it. of corse as with any oils be sure to get the oil off with a clean dry tissue (or with a spot of alchohal on it). Unlike GOO-GONE, WD40 does not seem to attack the plastics so far (ten+ years and counting)
I use the alcohal method my self. Cleaning rolling stock wheels I feel is VERY important. I did a little test of my own. I tried pulling 70 deluxe twin tubs (all with MT's) with one SD90MAC to no avail. I cleaned all the wheels on the train which took no more then 1/2 hour and now ONE C44-9W can pull 70 cars (yes on flat track). Lastly, cleaning car wheels helps keep engine wheels and track clean a lot longer. A little cleaning goes a long ways.
I'm another one of those rubbing alcohol users. I haven't found much difference in the 70% vs. 91% types. One suggestion that I have: Use an old t-shirt. This cotton material is great, and when it gets gross, is easily thrown into the washing machine. Jeff Augsburg & Concord R.R. (a fictional shortline in Central Illinois) http://www.pegnsean.net/~revnjeff
Rather than rubbing alcohol, which may contain baby oil or mineral oil, try using denatured alcohol, or even better, isopropyl alcohol. Even denatured alcohol probably has additives ( the denaturant agent).
Instead of using WD-40, try using kerosene. Kerosene is the main ingredient to WD-40, so that's what's probably doing the cleaning for you anyway. My favorite cleaning solvent is cable electrical cleaner. It's designed to be safe with plastics, a very strong solvent, non-flamable, and dries with no residue. It's a bit pricey, but I can get free samples from time to time. Polywater is a good source for it. Has anyone tried making a "sheep dip" system for their cars? If you use a non-flamable solvent and build a small "pool" just deep enough to wet down the wheels as the train is pulled through it. You'd have to have a "dry" track to wipe offf all the gunk, but that way you could clean a lot of cars fast. This is obviously something worth thinking about on only the largest layouts. Obviously I have more imagination than time to build one..... Mark in Utah
I use different methods. I am somewhat lazy by nature and cleaning wheels is not on my high priority list of using my energy. For locomotives, I apply power to the frame or engine leads and use dry fine wet-type sandpaper on each wheel. Tedious, yet effective. For metal wheels on cars, I manually turn each wheel and use the same sandpaper above. For MT, Atlas, MDC, LL and MP and plastic wheels, I manually turn each wheel slowly and scrape off the dust/crud very gingerly and carefully with a sharp xacto blade. I try not to touch the blade directly to the plastic. The dust/crud is usually so bad by that time, it has creeped inside the truck and now ready to fail while running. Don't forget to clean out the inside of the truck as that is where you will find a lot of grunge.
I use the alchohol method myself. After I'm done scraping off the gunk from the wheels, I take a sip of beer. Get's kind of interesting after you've cleaned 50 cars.
