Track Cleaning Tutorial - Part 1 Eraser Today I want to talk to people about track cleaning. Our track is much harder then smaller scales to keep clean because it's designed for outdoor and indoor use. Now I have some oxidized brass track that I wanted to clean to restore electrical conductivity to. There are many methods. Smoke Fluid, Track Cleaning Pads, etc. But today we're going to talk about what I call the eraser. I was at Hobby Lobby the other month and picked up an HO Gauge Life-Like track cleaning pack. Inside was a voltage tester, gear lubricant (Tested on my Long Steel Caboose), Grease Gun, bottle of Track Cleaning Fluid (Next time) and an eraser that's an abraisive. On HO Style Track you rub it across both rails at once. On G you do it rail by rail. Let's take a look at a piece of track: Notice the green Oxidation from being out in the rain too long w/o being cleaned. How can we solve this with a simple eraser? I'll show you. This is the Like-Like Eraser. Cleans Model Railroad and Road Race Rail. Made In China!! Wonder if they manufacture LGB. Okay joking aside: Okay. Now take the eraser in hand and apply light pressure to the track. Act like you're erasing something on paper and run it on the rail up and down. You will notice the rail begins to shine. In the case of the oxidized track, the oxidation lifts off and rail begins to show. Now for the sides of the rail I would recommend taking the rail off the ties. It will take a good 30-40 minutes depending on the amount of track you have and how dirty the track is. This is the result you should have: Tomorrow we will talk about using Life-Like's Track Cleaner Fluid. The Magical Blue Liquid you shouldn't leave unattended around little children. -Nate aka DragonFyreGT
You are right, there are many methods of cleaning track, but doing this by hand would take me 3 months. There are a couple of track cleaning cars manufactured out there, we know aristocraft makes one, but I have seen others also, but with abrasives like you said. I have even seen one track cleaning car with rotating battery powered brushes, for someone like me, I ust on't have the time to do it by hand. I use a home made set up which is just basically a old broom stick with a cut down mop head on it so there is rotation involved and attach my cleaning pad soaked with a little smoke fluid to the cut down mop head and clean the whole track in no time flat I like this thread though, so keep going, maybe there is a better fluid I should be using. I never thought about cleaning the sides of the rails though, I just cleaned the top of the rails and thats it
It is, but that oxidation is hurting my conductivity. I'm finding doing this by hand a good way to keep myself busy when theirs nothing else to do. A lot of experimentation on the track cleaning and lots of track for me to test and review many methods of it.
i used to have a garden layout for 4 years but i never had to clean the track. even after months of not running trains i had no contact issues at all. oh, it was outdoor in my backyard. using steel wheels on all cars really helps. after only a few laps the track was shiny again. plastic wheels tend to leave residue on the track causing contact problems. also i used standard railjoines as they come with usa trains track. i didn't use screwed ones. but i added a piece of wire which connected the two pieces of track. one pair of feeders for 200+ of track was all i needed to have smooth and flawless operation.
I use Aristocraft/LGB (Made In Germany!!!) Brass Track. I haven't fully converted over to steel wheels yet. A few pieces of track are massively corroded, but most aren't. Also I had no idea that aristocraft's track is a total POS. Odd considering their locomotives tend to be pretty decent.
