I had a visitor the other day, good friend of mine who models Ho scale...he was complaining that his absoloute

Gem of a track cleaning car was leaving moist grime on his railheads even after going around 3 or four times.

The issue being that you really need a soaker and then an absorber..

He didn't want to purchase another track cleaning car as the exchange rate down under doesn't buy you many greenbacks, in other words i wouldn't fork out $180NZ either....retail..include shipping tax and the usual model stores 100% markup.

The Above picture is the result of our discussion(1st generation) Dual wet and dry track cleaning car...cost....$4.50NZ .....trucks and couplers. . .in N Scale of course.

The first roller is saturated to the point of dripping cleaning fluid. The second is dry and picks up the grime      

A small piece if car arial  cut to fit between the sides of the frieght car.(12-14mm length)

A second piece of car arial(smaller) is cut slightly longer so it rests atop the sides of the scratch built flat car.(14-16mm length)

the cloth is then cut into strips glued with a dab of C.A. then rapped around the arial untill it reaches the desired diameter that it contacts the rail head all whilst the arial is resting on the side frames of the flat car. A dab of C.A. is then applied to the centre of the roller where minimal contact with the track will be made....

the rollers are not round...you dont want them to be as they wont provide a scrubing action (they'll just roll)

however if the cloth snaggs a point or frog it will turn.

I Did not have any suitable wieghts in my spare parts Dept so four of my 1/4 inch sockets suficed for the purpose of testing. the result....4 striaght DC locomotives that can crawl 5 inches a minute at my controllers lowest setting... not even my old HO bachmans would do that on new track

The below drawing is a revised plan as the 1st one has too much flex in the chassis, it will also be longer and made into maybe a gondala or Reefer, the couplers will be mounted to the body aswell to allow having a pusher locomotive (also to stop the trucks jacknifing) also as one locomotive will not pull the two cleaning cars without breaking traction and two locomotives in front tend to have a hunting effect on the abrasive cleaning car that is infront of this one.

The Diamensions (length and width) I am simply taking from an exsisting frieght car already in my fleet. so you could use this for any scale.