swipes with moderate pressure with each product. As a con-
trol, I used a dry rag with no solvent, and then used each of
the different products on separate sections of the mainline on
my layout. I couldn’t come up with a quantitative way to mea-
sure the dirt removed other than visual observations.
Liquid Solvent Track Cleaners, worst to best:
Dry cloth – not very effective (as expected)
Water – better than dry but the track is still pretty dirty
after 10 swipes
Windex – not very effective, but better than water
Windshield washer fluid - not the best but will do in a
pinch. For those of uswho live in theNorthernparts of the
world, there is always a jug of this stuff in the garage!
Rubbing alcohol – moderately effective. The track was still
dirty after 10 swipes. It took a few more before it was to
tally clean.
Paint thinner\mineral spirits – lots of black gunk comes off
with this stuff
Acetone – lots of black stuff comes off and the track is
clean
Goo Gone – works well, but leaves a residue behind that
has to be cleaned off.
Lacquer thinner – track is pretty clean even with fewer
than 10 swipes
Varsol – the most effective cleaner. Track was clean before
the 10 swipes were completed.
(Varsol is very similar to white spirit, mineral spirits, mineral
turpentine, turpentine substitute, petroleum spirits, solvent
naphtha and Stoddard solvent. It is a petroleum-derived clear,
transparent liquid which
is a common organic sol-
vent used in painting and
decorating. Varsol is either
difficult or impossible to
acquire for non-industrial
use in the US and particu-
larly in California.)
Looking at this list, we can
see that the strong liquid
3. The easy way to use a liquid cleaner, the CMX clean
machine.
3
4. I installed curtains
around the layout in a
futile attempt to keep
the dust off. It still
gets in somehow.
4
Experiments with track cleaning - 3
MRH-Jul 2014
