Milwaukee Road Dave posted:Nice idea, but in my experience (and I am in a maintenance window now cleaning all the cars on my layout, about 150) the only way to ensure each wheel is perfectly clean is to put the car upside down in a cradle and clean them one....wheel.....at.....a.....time. Yep, time consuming, but not difficult. IMHO my cars are worth this effort.
I wear a heavy latex glove, spray a bit of goo gone on a rag, spin the wheel set with my non-glove hand and rub away. I do one side of one truck at a time, and remove the dissolved gunk with a clean rag. Really gunked up wheels take a bit longer but the goo gone will dissolve it off. Seventy cars into the project and I figure about 5-6 minutes per car.
If you want to speed the effort, consider your handy Dremel tool. I make these from purple ScotchBrite and they clean wheels in a flash.
If they're REALLY bad with the caked on ring of grease, I first peal that off with a screwdriver, then use the wheel. I can knock out a car much faster than doing it all by hand. While they're up there upside down, I also lube any that require lube. I don't oil the needlepoint axles in the plastic inserts, those really don't benefit from oil, at least IMO. I oil the Menard's cars well as they really benefit from a good lube job.
