How many hours before cleaning your loco wheels?


A

AllenB

Member
It's been almost a year since I ran any locos on my layout. This weekend I decided to clean the entire track with a 600 grit sand paper and then wiped it all down with alcohol. Got out the locomotives, cleaned the wheels and let um' rip! About every 15 minutes, it seemed I had to keep cleaning the darn things! I don't remember having to clean them so much. Is my track THAT dirty still or is this typical?
Thanks!
 
The museum cleans track every morning, locos' wheels weekly, and car wheels are on a once a month schedule. On the winter schedule that would be about 18 hours of actual running between wheel cleanings on the locos and 72 on the cars. Summer schedule that would be 30 hours on the locos.

Did you clean the car wheels? Maybe they are just transferring their dirt to the locos.
 
Not to highjack the thread, but what method does the museum use to clean the car wheels?
 
KB02 said:
Not to highjack the thread, but what method does the museum use to clean the car wheels?
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Similar to the locos. Cloth is placed on the track and wetted with cleaning fluid. Train is pulled across the cloth. Cloth is repositioned and pulled through again. Repeat until cloth is clean after train has passed. The "cloth" is often a fiber reinforced paper towel.
 
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I clean the wheels on my locomotives when I can notice the headlight starting to flicker. I run DC only and it is a lot more forgiving than DCC. I have a piece of test track that I use to clean the wheels with a piece of paper towel doused with Alcohol. Dirty wheels come from dirty track. My layout is in a finished basement and with our kids gone, the only reason to go down there is to add salt to the water softner and to go into the train room. Dust is not much of a problem, but I will admit that I really don't have a set cleaning schedule for cleaning the track.

There have been periods when I haven had the chance to run trains for months and when I finally do start I running them, I usually don't have any problems. With the exception of a few switch engines, I usually rotate road engines. I have hidden staging tracks that I store trains that were outbounds that will become inbound trains and usually change them out on a regular basis when I am operating. I try to run them all to keep things lubricated. Perhaps once or twicea year I will go through all of my locomotives and lightly lubricate them. I have a few brass locomotives that are too large for my turntables that live in their box most of the time, and they are also lubricated and let run laps for about an hour to also keep everything running smoothly. Wheel cleaning is part of the normal routine.

I don't like to let any locomotive sit and not run for any long period of time. I don't think it's good to just let them sit idle. When I'm working on the layout, doing scenery or detail work, I'll raise the bridge on the hidden staging track and just let trains run, changing locomotives out after about an hour.

Maybe I have been a bad boy. I don't clean the wheels on my freight equipment. All have metal wheels and I notice very little if any buildup on the wheels.
 
Allen:

I wouldn't and I'm sure most Forum members will agree with me that it is not advisable to use any type of sand paper on HO track. The sand paper with create grooves in the rail head which will attract grime and dirt like a magnet.

Wipe the track with a clean cloth and alcohol to determine if the track is still dirty or is the reason dirty locomotive wheels that is causing your problems.

How did you clean the locomotive wheels?
 
Thanks all! Greg you are right about the sand paper and I know I shouldn't do it but the layout had been sitting for so long I said what the heck. After I cleaned it, I was running locos only and no rolling stock so I'm not sure why the darn things were getting so dirty so quick. Seemed like 5 times around the circuit and it was time to bring the in.
 
I would say it was debris from the sanding that is getting on the wheels. Take a vacuum to the layout. I don't know that you can fix the damage that you have done to your track short of extensive use of jeweler's rouge to smooth out the track again or just replace all the track.
 
I'll echo what Greg and Ken said about sanding. I've been told that even a Brite-Boy can damage the track, although I haven't seen any evidence of it. BUT I only use it when all else fails. I actually don't clean track more than once a year, and that's a preventative more than a necessity. I do have a Woodland Scenics "Dust Monkey" attached to each of my cabooses (cabeese), which may help me.
Willie
 
D&J RailRoad said:
I would say it was debris from the sanding that is getting on the wheels. Take a vacuum to the layout. I don't know that you can fix the damage that you have done to your track short of extensive use of jeweler's rouge to smooth out the track again or just replace all the track.
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I vacuumed it all before and after the light standing with the 600 grit. I highly doubt the track is damaged from that. After a good wheel cleaning, they seem to run flawlessly for about 20 minutes then I'm back to square one. I do run a rolling stock with a brightboy of some type on the bottom but I'm not sure if it does any good or not. Obviously I'm doing something wrong so I'll keep trying different cleaning methods (no more sand paper).
 
Give it a clean with some rubbing alcohol on a piece of cotton shirt...clean the loco wheels too. Then lightly rub a 2-4 inch section of track with a piece of artists graphite...don't scrubit onto the track or rub it on hard! One or two light passes along the track section,with the power off!!!!....then run a loco around the layout 3 or 4 times. See if that helps.
 
I always cleaned my N scale track with a sanding sponge. I'd get 2 of them, and sand them together first, than run over the entire layout. I never had any problems. Another thing I found is that track would get more dirty on areas that didn't have trains sitting on them. I guess empty track gets dirtier that full track, so that was an excuse to buy lots of rolling stock!
 
My 2.67 cents:

"How many hours before cleaning your loco wheels?"

Well, believe it or not, with one exception* I've never cleaned them in 20 years of operation. A couple of drops of wahl hair clipper oil from a hypo syringe about every 20 to 25 feet or so on each rail head lasts 4 to 6 months. [I run trains at least every other day.]

* I was trying a test and purposely put a little too much wahl hair clipper oil on the rail heads. And yes I then had to clean (run a soft dry cloth) on the 3 locos' drive wheels and the rail heads on that particular track loop. One interesting thing was that the excess oil acted as an electronic barrier between the rail heads and the engines' metal pick-up drive wheels. This of course is no problem when applying the oil properly (lightly) - see above paragraph.

Believe it or not, I can usually hear when the rails "need" or could use "wahling." The rolling train noise/sound is coarser than the smoother sound right after using the oil. Average train size - 60 cars.

As info, my model railroad layout is in an air-conditioned house.

Hope this is helpful.

DougC
 
SD90 said:
Another thing I found is that track would get more dirty on areas that didn't have trains sitting on them. I guess empty track gets dirtier that full track
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That is an interesting observation. That would indicate to me the "dirt" in your instance is dust falling rather than track corrosion/oxidation or dirt being smeared around from other pieces of rolling stock/locos and/or being collected/generated by static charges on plastic wheels.
 
No-Ox works great. Clean track once (it's usually has some surface corrosion when you buy it) and apply very sparingly. Run locomotives, wipe off the next day and forget about it. It prevents corrosion on the rail surface and treads of the locomotives.
Plastic wheels are allegedly a culprit in causing dirty track. I haven't had any issues with them using No-Ox.

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk
 
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