This car turned up under the Standard Gauge layout at our toy train museum and nobody knew where it came from. Best guess is that it was built by a former member. It had fallen into a state of disrepair - wheels and axles were rusty, screws were loose, and whatever was originally made to do the actual cleaning had disappeared and someone had Mickey Moused something with a piece of wood and a scrub sponge. I decided to take it home, give it a tune-up, and build a new pressure plate.
The car is made from steel plate. It looks like the base was torch cut, as the edges are very irregular. The stakes and the box for the pressure plate are welded in place. The result is crude looking, but it is heavy, which helps to make it an effective track cleaner. It weighs almost two and a half pounds. The lumber load is a bad copy of a Lionel load made of balsa wood. I acquired it with a flatcar I bought and it happened to fit snugly between the stakes on the track cleaner, improving the appearance.
I made the pressure plate assembly from scraps of 3/4" MDF and 1/4" Masonite glued together. The bottom of the pressure plate is covered with Velcro. It is sized to fit a half sheet of Scotch Brite from the supermarket. By a stroke of luck, it fit perfectly as built, and the amount of give in the Scotch Brite is just right to give good pressure on the track without any assistance.
The car works well. A few drops of alcohol in line with each rail serves as cleaning fluid, and the pads are easy to replace on the Velcro. I'm thinking of making another pressure plate that would use pieces of cloth for a non-abrasive cleaning - but that's a project for another day.
