I've noticed some small gouges on the surface of the circular chamber where the vacuum tool plugs in. These gouges also have minute rough edges around them. I'm guessing a bit of ballast got digested--not enough to jam the spinning vacuum, but enough to gouge the plastic. The vacuum will change pitch when hits something like a bit of ballast, and will either digest it in a while or jam. I've found that these minute rough edges will prevent the vacuum tool from spinning. As I've mentioned on other threads, I had to stop six times on the initial run-around to clear jams and clean out the chamber. That's about 3 scale miles per stop on my layout. On the last few stoppages, despite a rigorous cleaning, the vaccum would not start up again. Without any tool, the motor ran freely. With the vacuum tool, it did not, until I smoothed off the gouges with a very fine grit (1200) sandpaper. And I did experiment with mounting the tool with varying pressures, and made sure it could flex according to instructions. At the speed the vacuum is spinning, I'm assuming it doesn't take too many revolutions to cause a gouge--and thus my cutting power as fast as I could (when the whine went to a chatter) was probably 1000x longer than needed to cause damage. Anyone else have the same experience? (I will post this over on the Atlas Forum, as it is an Atlas product.)
Pete, The Sydney N scale mrrc has two of these units which get a work out every running week end (3per month) an E/B & a W/B,one unit has been sent to the maintainence shop for a new engine,it used to run for 10-15 min & then slowly die in the-you know what!I'm guessing each unit has clocked up inexcess of a thousand scale miles already,Pete we don't use the vaccum function just the emery wheel/track cleaner disc's. It worries me because ppl are geting lazy & just running the track cleaner cars around & around etc etc,some of the track is 10 to 15 years old & with the emery disc's they do abrase the rail head a fair bit!Will this lead to rail head height being reduced?Also cleaning track by hand allows one to check track work,points etc visually for any defects. Has anyone else had a motor die on them yet?
Yes, the rail head will be reduced over time. Somebody might want to go and check around with a mic to see if there is any measurable wear at this point in time. Some years back, a local 0 club was finding many locos wouldn't run on their layout, and discovered it was because the rail head was worn away. Not just worn, but gone in some places. Blamed on whatever abrasive track cleaner they had been using over a period of years. I would think scratching from emery would cause more dirt to be trapped in the track as well as leaving residue to be picked up by loco mechanisms.
