How to Clean Model Railroad Track: Cleaning Tips and Techniques

Hi, I'm Doug Hodgdon from the Model Railroad Academy, and I am here with... Mike Swiridow, from the Pine County History Museum Model Railroad Club. And in this segment, we want to talk about track cleaning techniques. Now, we've had questions on track cleaning, and of course, model railroaders have a lot of opinions about what they think works for them, and so we thought we'd show what we use for track cleaning and let you make your own decision. Yes. So first off is the Bright Boy, which has been around forever, at least 50 years, probably, if not more. And it's just an abrasive block. Now, this is a piece of brass track, which of course most people don't even use anymore, but brass would oxidize and not be conductive. Right. And so people would use a Bright Boy and actually clean the top of the rail. But then, of course, as soon as you're done, it would want to oxidize again, and so people don't use brass rail so much anymore. That's pretty much old fashioned. The next thing is this is a foam track cleaning block, and that's sort of superseded the Bright Boy in a way, because it's foam, and you can use it as-is, and I use the, this is the medium grit. You can cut this down with a bread knife to whatever size you want and clean the track like so. And so what I did, I mentioned this to someone the other day, this is a track cleaning car. Now, I'm in S scale. This is a track cleaning car that I scratch-built. Doesn't have to be pretty. I put weights on there to kind of put a little bit of weight on top of the sanding block. This is a sanding block, and I designed it with the washers in where the truck mounting screws are so I can adjust the height of the sanding block off the rail. So basically, although this isn't the right size track, this track cleaning car rides along like this and cleans the track, and that's great, especially for sections of track that you can't get to, if they're hard to access. Right. So I use this, and I think it's great. Now, some people don't like abrasive, they think it scratches the rail. Now, I've never had any trouble. I mean, if the scratches to me are so small, they're not even noticeable. But also, if my track isn't real dirty, this is a homemade thing with a paint stirring stick and just a heavy duty paper towel taped onto it, and so I can actually do this, and I put just a light bit of a lacquer thinner on it. Lacquer thinner evaporates quick, so it cleans and it's gone, and I just do this with a wetted paper towel. I think that works real well. The other thing is people use Goo Gone, and this is, it's an oil-based cleaner, and it does get dirt and stuff off your track, and it leads a little bit of an oil film afterwards, which is something I don't use. I mean, I like to keep my rail dry. There's also other products out there. Mike and I earlier mentioned Rail Zip, which is one. It's basically automatic transmission fluid that they put in a bottle, and evidently there's supposed to be something in this chemical in the automatic transmission fluid that's a cleaner and prevents oxidation and all that. And then the Wahl Clipper Oil is another type of oil cleaner that does the same thing, and the people that like the oil think that that oil residue on the track keeps the track from oxidizing. You know, and it supposedly improves the electrical contact in the rail. Well, like I say, I haven't... You know, for me, I don't use the oil-based stuff, but I just wanted to show what's out there. Now, Mike, you have... Yeah, what we've done here, because of the areas that we have to clean, some of it is back up against the backdrop, and we have a lot of scenery in front. So we have some hidden track that we need to get to. This system here is the Tidy Track Cleaning System that you can get, Woodland Scenic and other people, but it'll rotate, you have different pads that you can put on there. They've got abrasive type pads out here. This will work for both HO in one direction, then you've got another direction over here that depending on which way you put it, you can use it for N gauge as well. Now, is that grooved? So it'll stay on the rails. Right, exactly. So if you're sliding it down the rail, it'll just follow the rail. Right, so you can do deep cleaning with this. We normally don't do too much of this, maybe a couple times a year, but a lot of times we'll pick up some areas that we don't use a lot. A lot of the sidings are not used a lot by the people that are running the train, so what we'll do is we'll use this, and then this is the stuff that comes with the Tidy Clean. Or you can buy the bottles of that, put some on the pad here, this is just a little fiber pad out here, and you can do the same thing. Nice thing on this is that if you've got a long run, you can't reach it, you can see how it does articulate out there. Yeah, that works pretty good. You know, you can just take it back and forth like this. One of the problems that a lot of people have is in the switch, where the points come up against the rail, if you get a lot of dirt. It's an electrical contact, and electrical contact will eventually get that little black soot down there. You can use electrical contact cleaner on that too. You can get a spray bottle and spray the area there, for it to clean the track back and forth. Lot of times you can use a Q-tip or even a paper towel to get up there so that the points make the contact to go through there. So these are the different items that we use at the museum out here to keep 'em going. You know, maybe we should mention talking about switches, you know, on those switch points, if you're relying on the switch point for electrical contact, you can, if you're using a switch motor, or even Caboose Industry's ground throw switches are available with electrical contacts, so that you can actually feed the switch through an electrical contact underneath and not have to worry about keeping those switch points clean. Right, yeah. So that's a good, good point to bring up. Yeah, but if you do, like in certain areas that we have, if we're gonna take a siding and we're not gonna power that siding, then we have to take it off the main line, so you have to throw the switch on that. So it depends on the brand of your switch and what you're trying to accomplish. Exactly. All that kind of thing. Well, that, yeah, that sounds pretty good. Well, I think that wraps up this segment. Thank you, Mike. Thank you.