I've read many times that "the more you run your trains, the less you will have to clean your track." This is not my experience at all on my new DCC layout. I'm working in a new, clean layout environment, with new engines and cars, on DCC. After a few hours, I find a greasy, black residue on the rails, and locos start slipping, but just a bit. I know all about old cars and locos from the old layout depositing their crud on the new layout, and have avoided it like a plague. The new cars have metal wheels. Maybe the old saw doesn't hold water? Any theories about why?
If you run your trains all the time, you can clean your track a little at a time instead of the whole thing all at once. I've stopped cleaning the rails, just clean the engines. With the 98% alcohol method, it's too easy to just let the engine pick the crud off the rail and remove it when I do the engine cleaning! Vacuuming the ballast extends the clean life of an engine immensely. I just use a shop vac with a stocking hose over the end (to catch little things). I think a lot of dirt gets trapped in the ballast, and it only causes problems when the ballast is full. Tony Burzio San Diego, CA
Pete: The HO club I belong to has that same problem with their DCC layout. I can't believe how fast the track gums up. Everything has metal wheels but it get's dirty really fast. We are forever running a track cleaning car around it when we run for extened periods of time. My own DC n scale railroad seems to stay remarkably clean even when I don't run for over a week at a time. I can't explain it.
The way it was explained to me is that the "greasy black crud" is mostly carbon that is created from the microscopic arching between the locomotive wheels and the track as the engine moves along. It is kind of slipery like garphite but does not conduct as well. For some reason the higher track voltage always present for the DCC causes a lot more buildup. When operating conventional DC, you may only have 5 or 6 volts to keep the engines moving along. However with DCC there is always 12 to 14 volts no matter how fast the engine is runnin. This creates hotter sparks that make more crud. Don't know if this theory is correct but it seems to make sence to me.
Pete: This isn't a problem with Kato Unitrack. It rarely has to be cleaned and this is a common experience with "Unitrack users". Kato track must have a different rail composition than other manufacturer's track. I have no logical explanation for this phenomena. I'll clean the track after about 3-4 months using Tony's CMX+ track cleaning car. The JJJ&E is run for at least one hour per day. I've been running DCC for 4 + years now. Stay cool and run steam....
There must be something happening here, that in all my years of model railroading, I've never experienced. Although all my layouts have been non-DCC, I have run quite a lot on an HO layout that was DCC (Lenz) from day one. And it never had any dirty track troubles. Could there be outside influences, such as humidity? Or any other factor? Is there a possibility of a track cleaning substance that is leaving a residue? Which speeds the crud buildup? (I've seen this happen on non-DCC.) Boxcab E50
It's the coal that Pete's Pennsy steam burns. That eastern coal is dirtier than our clean western coal.
IMy layout is Dc and I rarely need to clean it as i run trains at least once a week. My only experience with DCC was helping a friend out at an exhibition and I experienced the same problem as Pete. We had to clean the track constantly and in the end we converted back to DC which seemed to be more reliable.
It's definitely carbon-based--I can smell it. It smells just like the stuff I'd wipe up with my fingers from Lionel track when I was five years old, and Lionels certainly sparked a lot. Then it was the smell of power; now it's something else. I spent a fair amount of time cleaning with alcohol yesterday before the Xmas party. While I was having no real running problems, I was impressed with the amount of black stuff that came up. Right now, I'm tending to agree with Tony--that some of it may be caused by residual dirt caused during construction. I also think there's some arching going on, as the dirtiest parts are located where the track isn't quite perfect.
Certainly vacuuming the track, like Tony B. says, would help. I have never heard of this before. Maybe Pete N., or someone, could vacuum their DCC track and see if it helps.
I'm going to have to do a little more research on this, but my HO scale buddy learned a trick from someone who works at P-B-L (the Sn3 folks). Basically my friend polishes his track with 500 grit or finer sandpaper before installing it on the railroad. It removes all the tooling marks left over from the injection molding of the ties. He ends up only having to wipe his rails every once in awhile with alcohol or windex. He never has to take a bright boy to it. Sounds interesting and my friend let me examine some rail using an optivisor (and I did see marks before sanding). When I learn more, I'll post more details.
When my old DC layout got dirty--and it did, because of dust in the house and long periods of inactivity, I used 600-800 grit sandpaper to clean it. I wasn't too worried about using that fine a grit, as it tended to polish rails rather than scratch them. Chris brought up a great point. I just went out and looked closely at my rails. Under oblique light and magnification, I could see tooling marks, probably not from the tie molding process, but the extrusion process of making the rail. Interesting. I don't want to overstate this problem. My initial post noted "just a bit" of slipping. Given my grades, others may not have noticed any degradation. There was a little bit of black stuff on the rails this morning after three hours of running last night--but no degradation was apparent last night, nor this morning. Perhaps I'm being too much of a clean freak?
I guess I'm in the camp that doesn't polish track. I only have to clean the Unitrack once every three to four months. Stay cool and run steam....
My friend mentioned extrusion marks from the die which I also saw. Powersteamguy1790: I wonder if you examine a piece of the unitrack under an optivisor you would find a very clean rail? Maybe they polish the rail before installing it in the plastic base? It's interesting that you have the same success as some others claim by polishing the rail.
Chris: Most of the Unitrack users find the same results. I could go much longer without cleaning the Unitrack, but I do it at 3-4 month intervals. The interesting part is that there is no crud on the metal wheel sets. Before I converted all rolling stock to metal wheel sets; there was no accumulation on the plastic wheel sets. That is one of the good points of Unitrack. There is very little maintenance or upkeep. Stay cool and run steam....
I live in a very hot, dry and extremely dusty environment. What works for me is plastic wheels on Unitrack. I have cleaned my Unitrack twice this year. The first time was (April?) when the Atlas Mogul came. It was a last-ditch attempt to improve electrical pickup on that one loco. It didn't help. The second time was a couple of weeks ago when the LL berk came. It laid down an oily film that I had to repeatedly wipe from the rails. I wonder how long I would have gone without cleaning the track without those two incidents? I have MT standard wheels on almost everything that does not have a motor or a light in it. In 7 years, I have never had to clean one of those wheels. I try to remember to clean the track at the club before I run on it, because I don't want to bring that dirt home. I use an ancient MRC 50' box car with a metal underframe and a masonite slider to clean the track at the club. In never use anything liquid except 91% Isopropyl Alcohol, and I never use anything abrasive on the rails or loco wheels. The locos that need wheel cleaning are the old relics with the bronze or brass colored wheels. The Atlas, Life Like and Kato locos that make up the bulk of my diesel roster have never had the wheels cleaned, except for a few LL bought at closeout that were rolling oil slicks. That's my experience in my environment. Yours will probably vary, but it works very well for me.
I think I found the culprit(s). I was trying to run a 60-ore-car train, when it buckled on a downslope. Very cruddy wheels on about half the cars. I could have sworn I cleaned them before putting them on the road. Obviously I hadn't--it was crud like on my old layout. I also put the Tomix/Atlas track cleaner on the rails with the vacuum. Now, I'd vacuumed with a small shop vac on Friday. I had to stop about eight times on the first lap to empty it out and unjam the mechanism. What surprised me was not the pieces of ballast that tended to jam the mechanism, but the very fine dust--not Albuquerque dirt dust, but extremely fine stuff. Just like the dust that comes from an electrostatic cleaner--which my wife had turned on by mistake a few weeks ago.
