Myth Busting – Scratching the Rails?
The often-reported problem with abrasive track cleaners is that
they will scratch the rail surface and dirt will accumulate in those
scratches. Sounds plausible. Let’s test it!
I abused a section of track with some medium grit sandpaper. If
anything was going to cause scratches, this should be it. I then
left it alone, cleaning the track with acetone whenever the layout
needed it. Admittedly, I only did the sandpaper abuse once, but I
couldn’t detect any difference between that section of track and
the rest. Locomotives have never stalled on the abused section, but
they have stalled on nearby sections that weren’t abused. The sec-
tion that was abused didn’t seem to be any dirtier than the rest of
my track.
While the scratch theory sounds plausible, I can see no evidence to
support it. I don’t recommend coarse sandpaper, but I would have no
concerns about using any of the track cleaning blocks on my track,
or on the wheels of locomotives. Until someone comes forward with
evidence to the contrary, I would say that this myth is busted!
Of course, rubbing a cloth along the tracks is not the most
exciting activity, and it is difficult to do in tunnels and bridges.
Why not attach the cloth to the train and run trains instead?
That is why track cleaning cars were invented.
I use a CMX Clean Machine. This is a brass tank car that drips
cleaning fluid onto a cloth pad while it is dragged around the
layout. The trade-off is that you have to change the cloth pad
frequently, and clean or replace the cloth pads afterward.
The key here is to change the cloth as soon as it gets dirty,
which might happen even before half a lap around the layout.
