Well, we know it's not this stuff. Don
I think Simple Green is a great idea! Buy several gallons, put it all in a tub. Then soak your track in it for about two weeks. At the rate it ate up my Fastrack it will completely dissolve your track--> problem solved, you have no more rusty track!
Seriously, a year ago I "restored" about twenty feet of very old (might even have been pre-war) Marx track including two switches and a similar batch of very old Lionel track, so it worked well. Now, quite honestly, it does not brand new - but it works well. Also, I started with twenty four feet of each - ten to twenty percent of each batch never did clear up well enough to work and look good.
Deoxit is worth it. Texas Pete's recommendation is certainly good. I used another brand, a penetrating electrical cleaner/decorroder I bought on Amazon - don't remember what, but essetnially the same I think. But that was step two . . .
First, I used Evapo-Rust , pretty much doing just like it says in the video in the link below - put some in a tub and soaked pieces for an afternoon. This product is not quite as fast or complete in removed rust as it shows in the video but it did a good job and it certainly seemed safe and non-toxic. I was concerned that it might "eat" the insulating pads in the track center rail, etc, but I didn't have any problems except with a few that were bad anyway.
Second, I rinsed and dried the track well putting it in an oven and heating it to about 240 degrees (i.e., above boiling) and leaving it for an hour in case evaporust or water had soaked into the track pins, etc. I'd didn't warp badly or anything doing this. I have no proof this step was necessary but it took nothing but a little time. Then when cool again, used the Deoxit on the pins, trying to get it to soak into the pins held in the track as a final "chemical" step.
Third: Bright Boys - I bought several and wore them out. About half the track (both Marx and Lionel) worked well once cleaned as above and then bright boyed "aggressively" - just lots of gentle pressure and time - stroke after stroke.
Sandpaper -in my opinion it is only a last resort. Don't use anything like 200 or even 400 sandpaper. Most auto parts stores stock at least 800 - the Autozone near me stocks down to 1500 grit wet-dry sandpaper, and sometimes you can find all the way to 3000 (which feels about like paper, it is so smooth). If bright boys don't work, 1500 won't either, so I generally use around 1000 and gentle pressure and a little time, maybe 800 if desperate. However - if a bright boy will not clean it up, it may be so bad that sandpaper is only going to make it worse, about 10% of my old track did not restore well.. Anything over 600 will ruin the track.
Pins - I oppose removing them if you don't have to: sometimes it takes enough force to bend or open up the track so why not leave well enough alone if it is? On my track, just because the visible outside part of a pin was rusy did not mean the pin did not have good connectivity to the rail. I used a penetrating electrical cleaner like Deoxit or something similar, then cleaned the rust off the pins with a Brightboy or sandpaper if need by. I then tested the connectivity of pin the track with a mulit-meter. If it was bad, then I pulled the pin and cleaned agressively. I used no new pins. I never thought of a pipecleaner to clean the inner side of the track, but had made sure the Evaporust got into the open ends of the track when pins would go and all, and cleaned each out well with the end of a fine rat tail file, carefully.
I then wiped it all with a thin layer of WD-40. Yeah, I know what people say, but I did it, and some friends did it, and if the track was badly rusted it will try to rust again, so this does work. Thin - keep it thin.
Just about all of the track treated like this "worked": trains would run on it. About 20% would rust again soon or looked really worn and bad. But 80% was good. I have some of it on display in my study (with my Dad's 1937 Marx train set) and it has not rusted in the last year. The rest I'm not using now and I put it in a sealed plastic bag into which I threw a bunch of old descicants from trains I bought in the hope they had some effectivness left.
