Track Cleaning

No.  I ran mine through the dishwasher, let dry, and tested the center and outside rails for shorts before installation.

I haven't tried it however, I use ultrasonic cleaners everyday at work for cleaning heavy carbon and oil build up. If its a proper strength cleaner, I would be concerned that the insulation would break down quite quickly due the the force. Otherwise I would expect that to the clean track better than anything you could possibly throw at the problem. The "sauce" we use at work is quite proprietary so I cant comment on that. But we did lots of testing before choosing what we use and in a 2 gal test machine, 1.75 gal water and .25 gal of purple power degreaser worked nicely for oil types of build up. Another favorite was to run equal parts distilled water and white vinegar with a splash of dawn dish soap for color. That mix will work against carbon and even surface rust to a point. The vinegar mix did lead to some discoloration of the metals it was used on but that could have been down to process time and cycle count on the fluid batch. Frequent fluid changes are a must when working with the more aggressive solutions. 

For track if your serious about the idea, I'd just start with water and hefty serving dawn dish soap. It would cut any oil/grease build up, and I expect the force from the drivers would lift off any rubber residue leftover from tires. Being that its water in tube track, I would remove all the pins and make sure I used compressed air to blow out each and every rail thoroughly, otherwise the process begins to invite rust. There are a variety of commercially available solutions (at a commercial cost) that will clean very well and even being water based contain rust inhibitors, claiming to be rust free. We have used some at work, and they due seem to work as advertised for the time we have the components serviced in our hands. Being that I do engine component work, most everything eventually gets oil bathed so rust is really only a worry while parts are loose and disassembled.

If you have a cleaner to try with, grab a spare piece of track and some distilled water and soap. I imagine though that apart from tearing down a long (decade+) standing layout, the shear amount of effort needed to properly do the job and avoid rust will be more effort than its worth. But if you've got the time and dime, do report back with what you find. 

Hey, thanks very much for that detailed reply. I recently bought a 15 liter cleaner and started thinking about the possibility of trying some track, so I  thought I'd see if anyone had any experience, what mixtures (of what) they had used, and what was the success rate?

I've several boxes of tubular that I've avoided cleaning.....mostly grease, dirt, grime rather than rust, so I'll try a few of those first. I've given thought as to the insulator and will dry those out first thing, then wait a few weeks, watching for signs of degrading. 

Getting a suitable cleaning agent as well as water ratio worked out will probably be the difficult part. 

It'll be a few weeks.

Thanks again for taking time.