How do you all dust/clean scenary elements on your big layouts? I live in farming country and dust is an issue in the house - so it will be in the train room.
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Good question.
I've given up. I'll feather dust locos and rolling stock but figure the dust makes for good weathering on autos and buildings.
Very carefully.....LO Seriously though, it is a difficult task. Akin to what museum curators must go through. If you don't have things that could be blown away by a blast of air, that's one option. A small diameter vacuum tube, connected to your house vac or shop vac could be useful along with a soft bristle paintbrush.
I can't really think of any foolproof method at the moment.
Well, if your railroad (layout) is prototypically weathered, as ours was, then the dust seems to add to some of the weathering (except the track, of course). When needed, we used very soft make-up brushes, while holding the vacuum hose nearby, as the fine dust flew off from the make-up brushes.
I like slightly dusty look, but enough is enough sooner or later.
I cover the vacuum hose with a nylon to catch any small details caught in the winds as I brush towards it.
If you have a strong rubber band that will hold it for a while, but the nylon's goal here is to see inside the vacuum bag asap and will wiggle its way loose. Holding it with my hand as well is kinda needed.
Have your children, or in my case, grandchildren, make you some slime. This stuff is fantastic for cleaning details on engines such as cooling fans, boxcar walkways, shingles on buildings, automobiles, you name it. It feels moist when you handle it (unless it's made dry), but any surface you press it on is completely dry and unmarked when finished. The vacuum cleaner methods mentioned work great for larger scenery areas. Woodland Scenics sells a similar product in a jar. Check their website.
There are a number of mini-vacuums available; most are offered as devices to clean a PC keyboard. Some are rechargeable with a USB jack; some are powered by AA batteries. A shop vac may "pull" too hard, so its hose might suck up scenic effects, people figures, scale automobiles, etc.
WEN makes a dust filtration device intended primarily for dust-gathering in a woodshop, but may be useful in a train room. It's intended for ceiling mounting, which enables it to capture airborne dust particles as small as 1 micron. However, installing it at the ceiling with eye bolts, providing AC power to it, and then climbing a stepladder to change its filters would be quite an ordeal in many train rooms -- mine, at least -- since my L-shaped train layout platforms already fill most of my train room.
If your layout is served by a furnace and AC system, there are SCOTCH-3m furnace filters that do a great job of filtering airborne dust, animal dander, etc. Change the filters regularly; it's much easier than hand-dusting trains, model structures, and scenic effects.
Mike M.
mottlerm@gmail.com
