Track cleaning cars

I have a Northeast Trains cleaning car that's only use is around one of our Christmas trees each holiday season.  And the only reason I use it there is because I can't reach the track at the back of the tree.  And, since this is an edited response now, I will second the comment below about needing three hands to change the pads.  This is one of the reasons I use it only around the Christmas tree.

Beyond that, the only track cleaning car I swear by is the proverbial old "0-5-0".  A good hand cleaning with a clean rag and alcohol works better than any track cleaning car made.  Provided, of course, every area on your layout can be reached by hand.

Curt

Pat's Trains (a forum sponsor) was offering track cleaning cars a while back, but I haven't seen them advertised lately in any of their posts?

Take a look at this thread

I have one of Pat's Cars a long PRR Gondola, but need to look for something a bit shorter as it is too long and doesn't make contact with O36 FasTrack curves.

Pat suggestions for a another York Pickup?

I have tried three different ones over the years so here is my take.

First is the one made by Northeast Trains. Works well due to a lot of friction and rubbing of the cleaning pads on the rails. These sell for $89. Only negative is changing the cleaning pads is awkward. Need three hands. Northeast Trains

Second is the Centerline car. This car is about $120. It also works okay but the cleaning pads are rolling free and frankly they do not apply enough pressure on the rails to get them really clean.

Third is this one which was being sold through Weaver but I believe it can be purchased directly from MNP This one is very expensive (around $175) but the design would suggest it would do a very good job cleaning the track. It does but we had problems with it because the cleaning pads would occasionally get caught going over the switches (Ross) and the car would derail. As is always the case, the derailments would happen at the most difficult spot to reach on the layout

On balance, if I were to start over, I would go with the Northeast trains car. I don't think the other two do that much of a better job to justify the added cost.

Great info John and everyone I will definitely check out Northeast trains

I have two track cleaning cars by R&R Lines.  The first is a covered hopper car with a cratex roller which rolls along the rails .... pretty ineffective results.

The second is a flat car with two 2 inch paint roller ( easy to replace by going to any paint dept at a hardware store ) which roll along the rails.  Is somewhat effective if you dip the first roller in Googone and let the second roller ( dry roller ) wipe the rail.  The flat car is of RR Lines design and is pretty heavy.  I use this car to wipe rails in tunnels and hard to get at areas.... otherwise I use a scotchbite pad and good old elbow grease on the reachable areas.

Our group uses two flat cars, which were made by an inactive member, that have velcro & scotch-brite mounted underneath the flatcar frame. The flatcar carries a little weight on top for positive contact. As far as using alcohol on the tracks,we used to use it but.... we have a guy in the group who is like a bull in a china shop. 

At one of our shows, he takes one of his loco's and oils the axles and gears. Mind you no one is paying attention to him. His time slot comes up to run his train and the loco has about 10 passenger cars behind it. After about 20 minutes or so I can see he's frustrated, and he already has a short fuse, so he asks me to help him find out why the loco won't pull the cars. I tell him switch loco's for now( little did I know that he oiled this one also). He tries the other loco and he get's the same results, no movement. It's hard enough to hear in the expo center with all the trains running and people talking, so I figured he's got 2 bad loco's, until I put my hand on the loco and I feel it vibrating. I look to the side of the loco and the wheels are slipping, bad.

Pulled the loco from the track and looked at the wheels, and they were soaked with oil. He might as well have made a salad with all the oil oozing off of the wheels; same with the other loco. My heart sank at this point because there had to be oil all over track 2 and the layout is 40'x50'.

Bring in the track cleaning crews with the alcohol & rags! (This is where it gets good). We spend 15 minutes cleaning the track of it's oil and I tell "Joe" not to use those loco's until he removes the oil from the wheels of both loco's because anyone after you will have the same slipping problem. "Joe" gets a bright idea and wants to speed up the track cleaning process but is out of loco's and decides he wants to borrow a fellow members loco to pull around track 2 with the flat car & scotch-brite. He asks everyone if he can borrow a loco, but they all know how he is with his equipment and they all refuse him. Finally a gullible member gives "Joe" a switcher & he puts it on the track. "Joe" takes the scotch-brite off of the bottom of the flat car, puts the scotch-brite on a table & pours the alcohol(70%) onto the pad, and it's dripping, puts the pad back onto the flatcar, puts the flatcar behind the switcher and powers up the train. The train moves 3 ft. and there is a spark under the flatcar (derail) which causes a fire on the scotch-brite. "Joe" panics, grabs the flatcar as I'm watching all this(and Mt. Vesuvius is about to explode with laughter),pulls the scotch-brite pad off while singeing his fingers, drops the pad and starts stomping on the pad along with the flaming alcohol all over his shoe bottom. The pad is stuck to the bottom of his shoe, he looks up at me with a silly grin , and I lost it;couldn't contain myself anymore along with all the other members. I'll say one thing his fire dance was something to watch!

The poor guy that loaned him the switcher nearly lost it from the fire, plus learned a valuable lesson that day about loaners(nothing serious)  Our "Joe"is the new FIRE MARSHALL BILL and we have done away with ALCOHOL.

                                    Steam Forever

                                         John

                    Co-ordinator of "The Raritan Valley Hi-Railers"

                             Catch the layout on facebook

I have a brass drop-center flat set up with two wells.  In one I have a roller with a rag glued to it, and in the other I have a block with some 320 wet-or-dry sandpaper on the bottom.  I put a few drops of Wahl clipper oil on the roller, and the sand paper comes along behind and polishes.  Best of all, it looks like a deep well flat car, complete with sprung six wheel trucks.  If I decide to convert it to a scale freight car all I have to do is cover the two wells.

I've got one of the Northeast Trains cleaning cars.  I have to agree with John (tr18), it works quite well.  I have found that if you use a small piece of masking tape, installation of the "pads" is much easier.  I use pieces of cotton T-Shirts and I haven't experienced any problems.

Chief Bob (Retired)

read this thread track cleaning

I use old socks, tee shirts and alcohol to clean track by hand where it is easily reached. I have several areas that are a little difficult to reach and long ago tried the Dennis cleaning car and then purchased a centerline cleaning car  I have done a few things to make it more effective. I cap the ends of the paint rollers and load the center of the roller with washers for weight. This helps the roller to rotate slower than it would just rolling along at speed, if that makes sense.  After the alcohol roller sequence, I drop in a fresh roller with washers, but squeeze a piece of sponge to wedge between the roller and the side of the opening to prevent the roller from rotating.  This makes the roller a pad to slide along and further wipe the track.  It has worked well for me, but old fashion elbow effort before hand on the track and loco and rolling stock wheels really helps as well.  Even though there have been many track cleaning threads, I still like to read the rethreads just in case there is a new technique.  And I enjoy seeing the new cleaning cars. 

Edit:  I just remembered that I have also placed a piece of scotch brite pad into the opening that is wedged tight with a weighted roller to scour the track as an experiment. I especially found the alcohol and scotch brite pad useful with elbow effort after I completed my scenic do over earlier this year to clean off paint and glue residue. So the centerline car can be used with different cleaning pad/roller materials.   

I took an old Lionel MPC junker boxcar and tacked a few blocks of 2"x2" steel to its frame, replaced the plastitrucks with good sprung trucks and stuffed a kinda alcohol soaked scotchbrite sponge underneath. The sponge was too tall to fit, the steel kept it tight to the track and the trucks soaked up the discrepancies in my track laying abilities. 

Follow that up with a cloth under another car and it worked just fine.

I use Centerline track cleaning cars for years. The results are great. I had most of the others and sold them. Centerline works for me.

For O gauge, my Trackman 2000 has never let me down but unfortunately it's no longer being made!

Will the centerline work on 2 rail as the wheels would have to be insulated.

I have the North East Trains version but have used Scotch Brite  pads instead of the ones included. Never really have been too impressed. I clean my track by hand and only use the cleaning car for places I can't reach, figuring it's better then nothing. 

Willygee, yes it will. This is the two rail version.

Regarding the Centerline car, I never really understood why it was made with such a heavy frame. Meaning that none of that weight is used to apply downward pressure the the roller (most people used heavy washers, quarters or BB's inside of the roller tube to add weight) and it's not needed to keep the roller moving forward since the rectangular opening captures the roller fairly well.

Seems like it could have been made of relatively lightweight plastic.