It's that time of year again so I thought I'd dig up one of my most requested "How tos"...
Because THE TREE makes for about an 8' tunnel that's a bear to keep the track clean in, I brought back an old favorite for track cleaning. Using Masonite, I cut myself pads 1 3/8" x 2 1/2" in size. I laid out a center line at 11/16" lengthwise and cross lines at 3/8", then epoxied two 1 1/4" drywall nails centered on the cross lines. While hardening, I drilled two 1/8" holes centered into the bottom of my car 1 3/4" apart. I then set the pad lengthwise on the rails, placed the car over the nails. That's it, there are no fasteners as the pad needs to freely travel up and down. Leave it in your regular consist and you'll never have a problem with dirty rails or wheels thru the holiday. It's also easily modified for Thomas' Clarabelle coach by shortening your measurements. The second pic shows just how much dirt "clean" track gives up after 20 laps.
For rare tinplate, I came up with the following to avoid drilling into a family heirloom or pricey collector's item. Using the same basic pad, I added a flexible plastic arm attached by sandwich gluing the pad to the arm with cardboard. I added a small lead weight to the end of the pad away from the arm. Then, at the other end, I sandwich glued two powerful magnets copped from those blinky pins sold at Wal-Mart (they come two to a pin) and placed another set on the car floor. Heirloom is now safe and track now gets cleaned as evidenced by the pad after ten laps.
The final pics show them in action. The train's wheels now stay clean and I no longer have to clean the rails themselves on a daily basis as I had to before.
Some may wish to color them on the sides and tops with black magic marker to hide them.
2 comments:
This is a great tip for cleaning, sir! Not useful for me right now, as I don't have even a single locomotive or car.... but it's very good for the future!
Some other tips that I discovered recently are here: http://home.swipnet.se/perz/tt.html#spice
As you are a very experienced modeler, I guess you won't find some new tips there, but maybe it worths a few minutes to take a look on these Swede guy ideas... about using anything in your house for diorama! :D Of course, mrs. Bob might not like to see the vacuum or any other object with some missing pieces... but this is it, the mice and aliens do a lot of troubles these days!
Thanks for the link...I like his work, it reminds me of those beautiful Faller, Vollmer and Herpa catalogs.
Can you imagine what his layout smells like...Momma's home cooking.
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