Soft cloth track cleaning cars best
Abrasive or masonite slider track cleaning cars get the top inner edge, but it’s true the lower inner edge can still have oxides. But every little bit helps, so these slider track cleaner cars remain popular, but they’re not ideal.
BEST TRACK CLEANING CARS
The best track cleaning cars use a cloth with solvents like mineral spirits. The heavy brass CMX Cleaner tank car is an excellent choice. It has a spring loaded corduroy type cloth wiper that gets soaked by a regular drip feed from the tank car. The spring loaded cloth wiper gets the inside railhead as well when cleaning.
However, the CMX car alone isn’t enough, otherwise you’re just loosening and redistributing the black gunk and not really removing it. Loosening the black gunk does expose some fresh metal on the railhead, so it is helpful, but your track will crud up more quickly again and you’ve also loosened black gunk to be picked up by rolling stock wheels depending on how much you have plastic wheels (more prone to accumulating loosened black gunk) vs metal wheels (less prone to accumulating loosened black gunk, but not impervious).
To pick up the loosened black gunk, you need one or more Centerline roller cars to follow behind. These cars have a heavy brass roller wrapped in a handy wipe like material. The soft loops in the cloth on the roller also seat down around the railhead, cleaning the top inside railhead as well. The La Mesa club runs THREE Centerline cars behind the CMX tank car with the solvent-soaked pad to pickup the loosened black gunk. Just leave the handy wipe cloth on the roller dry, don’t add any solvent.
TRACK CLEANING BY HAND STILL BEST
While a CMX car with mineral spirits followed by one or more Centerline roller cars is ideal, the best track cleaning will still be using a robust Q-tip soaked in mineral spirits rubbed along the top inner railhead until no more black gunk comes up. I like to use gun cleaning Q-tips because they’re quite robust and gave a longer wood handle that helps when trying to clean under bridges and inside tunnel entrances.
I soak the cotton bud in mineral spirits and work on six inches of track at a time, focusing on one railhead at a time. I rub cotton bud along the top inside railhead, making several passes, rotating the head slightly with each pass to expose clean cotton to the railhead. If the rail is especially dirty, it can take a couple Q-tips to get most of the black gunk.
To finish up, I rub a dry Q-tip along the inside railhead as well, rotating it and making several passes to make sure I’ve gotten as much black gunk as possible. Then I move across to the opposite inner railhead and repeat the process.
APPLYING GRAPHITE AFTER CLEANING
Once I’ve cleaned both railheads like this, I come back with a 4B stick of graphite and using moderate pressure give the inner railhead one quick swipe of graphite. I do not rub it back and forth nor do I give it more than one quick pass.
Lately when I clean like this, I have started apply the graphite in short 1 foot sections and the skipping a couple feet and applying another foot of graphite with a quick single swipe. I especially like doing the every foot then skip a couple feet method on grades to make sure I don’t overdo the graphite application. Graphite is something you must be very careful to not overdo because MORE is not better. With graphite, it’s the extremely light coat that you can’t see that does the magic.
DID THIS ANSWER YOUR QUESTION?
Hopefully, that answers your questions. We have a TMTV video coming soon where I demonstrate my track cleaning and graphite application methods.
