TRACK CLEANING
Most of our garden railroads use track power. To provide reliable
operation outdoors, the track must be cleaned periodically. I have
found that there are many different methods of cleaning track, and each
one has its pros and cons.
I use brass track primarily because it was fairly inexpensive and is
very robust in the outdoor environment. Brass as you all know oxidizes
and the resultant film is essentially nonconductive. All rail materials
are subject to contamination by dust, dirt, grit, and bug deposits.
Ants seem to find rails very handy to travel on, and their crushed
bodies add greatly to the mess we seem to have to deal with. Our summer
Florida rains add to the oxidation of the rail along with washing dirt
and grit onto our track.
Another major contaminant of our track is the plastic that wears off
the wheels of our rolling stock. Between the heat of friction and the
heating of the rails by the sun, the wheels soften and wear faster
leaving a nice insulating deposit of plastic film. The sun then helps
to bake this film into a material that is hard to remove. The easiest
way to minimize this problem is to switch to all metal wheels on all
your rolling stock. Plastic deposits on track can be removed using
track cleaning fluid or smoke fluid. It may take some rubbing, but
these two liquids will eventually soften the deposits so that it can be
rubbed off.
Grit on your rails can be handled by any track cleaning device to
sweep it off the rails. Grit in the points of your turnouts will
prevent them from throwing, or make them partially throw.
I have found that the easiest solution is to used "canned air" and a
small brush. The air is available at most office supply stores, and in
conjunction with a small stiff artist brush, can easily clean turnouts
of grit, dirt, or stray pieces of ballast
Leaves, litter, tree sap, bird droppings, sticks, twigs, acorns, and
other trash require removal by hand. If your ballast is glued down, a
leaf blower works wonders along with a large wet/dry vac. I use both
before any operating session, since my layout curves around a large
live-oak tree.
Oxides on the track must be abraded off to promote electrical
conductivity. This can be done using any or several pieces of equipment
that are available commercially. Most of us have used the LGB track
cleaning block which is expensive, but does a good job of removing
crud. It's use requires a great deal of "elbow grease" when track is
extremely dirty.
Several years back, I bought an aluminum car with one of these blocks
mounted on it which was to be pushed around the track for cleaning.
This worked well on fairly clean track, but was not effective on
extremely oxidized sections. The car also had an attachment for a video
camera, and was more effective for photography purposes than track
cleaning in the outdoor environment.
LGB makes a track cleaning locomotive which works quite well
providing you have excellent electrical conductivity between your track
sections. It has two motors, one to move the loco, and one to drive the
cleaning wheels. It is a "power hog", and will not run in a section
that has weak conductive rail joints. The replacement pads are
expensive, but are fairly easy to change. This unit does not run well
over turnouts, re-railers, and crossovers because it has a tendency to
bounce when it hits the shallow flangeway on these track parts. Because
of this, you will have to clean these areas by hand. The advantage of
this cleaner is that it does seem to do its thing on your railroad while
you are free for other tasks.