Hello!

I'm looking for a couple of locos suitable to pull track cleaning wagons. I have two Roco cleaners with AC-wheel set. Woundering if anyone has experience in this field?

What are the pulling capabilies of the Swedish Ub loco?
I have one in order for this winter, so I'm thinking of extending it with additional locos if suitable.

Since track cleaning is made whenever it neccesary, its important that the loco is somewhat resistant to dirty rails too, which might not be the case with the rather short Ub-loco... The 5-pole motor + mfx, isn't very great either, since most of them stops instantly dead at any dirt. Very bad in the tunnels!

Looking forward to some input of your own experiences would be great.

/ Martin T

PA-1 double headers are among the least sensitive to dirty track in my experience. Otherwise two heavy metal loks setup as a consist (easy with CS) should also do well... Never had my MY1111/MY1112 NOHAB double header stall on me

Lastly, let the loko(s) push (rather than pull) the track cleaning cars.

Hi!

Thanks all! Unfortunately I got rid of all my noicy DELTAs locos a few years ago. [xx(] Hmmm.. Maybe I should go looking for a second hand NOHAB diesel engine with DELTA decoder then. They look good too.

laalves.. Pushing the cleaning car? No, I dont think that would work on my layout. I better have a haevy, fast and dirt resistant loco doing the pulling job.

Talking about dirt.. I'm quite conviced that the problem is not so much dirt, but rather oxidation of the tracks. Guess the air in my garage isn't very dry unfortunately. Takes a whole lot of rubbing before that oxide comes off. I've cleaned some of the tracks with aceton and a soft cloth until there were no black stains left. Then I still had the contact problems. After use of sanding paper 800 it was perfect again.

Correction. I had the Roco cleaning Wagon after the two RC loks, but it just gve up and decoupled. So I put it inbetween the two loks, and things started working much better. Only remember to drive slow... But, the best cleaning tool so far is a chunk of wood which you draw along the tracks. And the cheapest. Someone here in this fora got me on the right track!

Thanks Erik!
Very good information!

I'll probably be much better off trying to get the humidity out of the air, rather than removing the oxide from the tracks.

My experience so far with the two Roco trackcleaning wagons:
- Doesn't do miracles. An oxided and dirty track (loco-stops-track) will not be cleaned, no matter how many passes you run the cleaning train. It doesn't clean the center rail either. I would say that 1 of 4 voltage dropouts is due to dirt/oxide on the center rail.

I've added a pick-up shoe under one wagon, on to which I glued 800 sanding paper. That wagon goes with one of the cleaning trains and takes care of the centre rail cleaning.

I have like 60 meters of tracks. I use two trains, which I run for one hour around on all tracks. This while I'm doing other things in the house. The cleaning must be repeated like every second, or every third week to maintain perfect driving conditions.

Interesting information! I'm quite familliar with both coatings and platings to achieve good electrical contact properties since I work in that field.

Tin plate is in general the best way to go, since the oxide of tin actually increase conductivity. They usually needs to be applied using electro plating and I'm doubtful if Märklin really put that much of effort into the making of the M-rail. Maybe I'm wrong and if so, then I must admit that sanding the rails, or even using these cleaning wagons is a BIG mistake, since they eventially will remove that plating.

Enviro coatings, like yellow, or clear Chromate is easy to apply by dipping, but they wear also off almost instantly. The method is cheap, but the coductivity usually suffers from it, even if the surfaces remain at a stable conductivity level over a longer periode of time.

Yeah.. I don't know.. But if somebody has a deeper knowledge about the material and finish used on M-rail, please fill in here.

Regards / Martin

Hi!

No Henk, I wouldn't worry about doing tinplate on the tracks. I'll then rather upgrade to C-tracks, or something. No, the track cleaning is a part of the work on the railway, both in the real world and in my basement.

Also I like the realistic blank look of the rails after running the cleaning wagon a few rounds.