Subject:
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Re: tarnished track
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:24:35 GMT
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Viewed:
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1197 times
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In lugnet.trains, Douglas Pool wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I just got a new train set and I was playing with it last night. I put in a
> couple of old straight rail pieces that are probably 5 yrs old with the new rail
> pieces. I had noticed that the old track feels rough to the touch like there is
> a small amount of oxide on the surface. When I was running the train around my
> loop, I could see a very noticeable decrease in speed when the engine was over
> the older track.
>
> I did a search to see if I could find something about this and found mostly
> people talking about some kind of track cleaning compound for model railroading.
> I also found one comment that 9V track is designed to clean itself.
>
> So how do people get rid of the oxide or if I just run my train over it a bunch
> of times, will it knock enough of the oxide off at the contact points that
> performance will improve?
>
> Thanks for any input and sorry if this was been discussed in gory detail before.
This has been discussed before but I would say that there is no firm conclusion
yet.
While I am a proponent of cleaning LEGO elements if they get to the point of
being visibly dirty or sticky, I'm in the "don't clean rails unless you really
have to, and especially not with anything abrasive" camp. But there are lots of
different viewpoints.
As you say, there is a commercially available cleaning device adapted from
conventional model railroading, there are cleaning fluids and there are those
that suggest plain water or isopropyl alcohol or other things.
I think the track/motor combination is designed to be self cleaning to a degree,
the wheel flanges make a grinding contact rather than rolling, and contact in a
different spot than where the traction tyres contact the rails. I think the
track is made of something stainless or plated but am not sure what. The wheels
appear to be chrome or nickel plated as they don't lose their shine much at all.
Again I do not know.
I dumped several bins of track in the wet slushy snow outside COSI in early
December, and they only got incompletely dried, it will be interesting to see
what happens there, I'm concerned about oxidation at the cut ends of the metal.
I hope this might spark another interesting discussion...
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | tarnished track
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| Hello, I just got a new train set and I was playing with it last night. I put in a couple of old straight rail pieces that are probably 5 yrs old with the new rail pieces. I had noticed that the old track feels rough to the touch like there is a (...) (21 years ago, 29-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains)
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