92007: The other Tomix Track Cleaner

[cteno4]

I have been tempted by this a few times on ebay, they usually go for $75-100 when they come up. its an interesting system in that there are two discs that spin with the edge on the track rather than the disc sander approach of tomix with the face of the disc on the track. almost like the centerline passive roller system but powered. looks like it should give a good cleaning to the rail head! might be a mess with track cleaner though depending on how fast the rollers spin!

 

you are right about getting spare rollers from microace, they never let out spare parts!

 

there are retailers that try to boost the price of japanese trains by 2x-3x the going rate. its a ploy like you mentioned to go with what part of the market will bare. usually its preying on those that dont know better or are too scared to try to buy from reasonable sellers on ebay or buy directly from japan. While they have every right to slap whatever price they want on it (and we not to buy from them), i dont like it as it prays on the new comers and to many it gives the impression that japanese trains are expensive, hard to get, and only for the rich collector! Nothing could be further from the truth!

 

ebay is fickle. some folks get carried away in the excitement (thats a lot of the purpose of an auction), many dont do their homework, some just decide they want it now and are willing to pay. I just figure out what i would be willing to pay and only bid to that level, if i get it, great, if not then there is always next time. most of the time its either something really rare im trying to track down and thats the only place it will ever probably come up or i just lurk for a good deal. if i can get it cheap then great, if not i can live without it for now. about every 3 months i pick up something on my favorite wish list and a great deal, just have to have patience!

 

BTW on the flip side of ebay i just got the top of the line brass centerline cleaner car new, $75 retail price, for $36! cant wait to use it on the club layout. one of our members uses two of these on his large untrak layout and loves them.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Bernard]

Jeff - congratulations I getting a bargain on ebay! Now I'm curious what it looks like. Here is another track cleaning car that was recommended to me but it's not cheap. Here is the link:

http://www.tonystrains.com/technews/clean_machine.htm

[cteno4]

Bernard,

 

yep had to wait last two went for close to retail! ebay is all about patience!

 

its the roller style with a large brass roller that you attach a piece of handiwipe around and soak in cleaner. this seems to be the most active cleaning that you can get w/o abrasion. the other style is the wiper kind like in your post that has a flat pad dragged along the top of the tracks. i had a couple of cheap ones a long time ago and always found they would hang up on points and any track joints that had a burr. although it was good to help find sharp points i would worry it might hurt points if something got hung up. that being said the unit you linked has been recommends a lot on the lists.

 

I like the centerline since one of the jrm members has a huge unitrak layout (all un attached, just floating on table top and risers) and he uses the centerline and it works wonderfully. gobs of track joints and it just rolls on!

 

the whole theory of track cleaning is something that comes up on the n scale and other groups all the time and is an endless debate. many like the oil cleaners that leave a film (clipper oil and the like), but others have found it can be very problematic. others like goo gone as its a great solvent, but it can attack some plastics and traction tires, but if not gobbed on and allowed to dry it should be fine. others sick with just isopropanol as its pretty save and dries very fast. some like the running cleaner trains on their own round and round for a long time, others like running them with other trains so some of the cleaners gets off the track and onto car wheels to loosen gunk on them, deposit it back on the track, then cleaned up by the cleaner train. again its an endless debate and probably really more a factor of what your layout is, environment, and rolling stock.

 

you can see a better picture of the centerline roller system here:

 

http://www.modeltrainstuff.com/product_p/clp-m2.htm

 

this is the big, wide heavy brass unit, they also have a cheaper, smaller one that looks like a gondola car.

 

folks have said the ultrasonic bath is perfect for cleaning the roller pads right on the roller w/o having to replace them much, but just snipping up a microfiber cloth or handiwipe should not be a big challenge!

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Bernard]

Jeff - I've been doing a lot of work recently on my layout and with it I've made a huge mess on the tracks. (Boy do I use a ton of diluted Elmer's glue on the scenery! I bought a big supply at Walmart in Sept., back to school special .10 USD per bottle, and I'm down to 2 bottles, can't believe it.) Well I'm clean the track and things are back and running but as I was cleaning parts of the ballast came up and will have to re-glue areas. I think I better consider getting a track cleaning car, would you recommend this one over the Tomix?

[cteno4]

Bernard,

 

well they are different in how they work. the aztec and centerline are pretty simple just drag a roller soaked in cleaner over the tops of the rails. very good for picking up the general grease and oil that you get from running rains along with the dust and schmutz that it attracts.

 

the tomix can do rail polishing like this, but it does it with a small rotating pad. this can stick at some points folks have found and it a very small surface area compared to the centerline/aztec rollers for cleaning. they also have abrasive discs you can use if you are an abrasive type! the thing i really like about the tomix is the vacuum cleaner feature. this is wonderful to pick up the hairs and puzz that are the things that love to get sucked up into truck gears.

 

one thing folks generally report with track cleaning like this is to make sure to run the cleaning train for a while when using cleaner as it takes a few loops for the stuff to start loosening and then get stripped off sometimes. also some folks will run cleaning trains with trains with dirty wheels in order for the cleaner on the tracks to loosen the crud on the dirty wheels that then gets deposited on the track and then picked up by the cleaning cars. i dont have many trains with really dirty wheels like this, but i can see how it could work. one problem with this solution though is the worry if you have traction tires they could get attacked by your cleaning fluid. luckily most traction tires seem immune to the gentler cleaners.

 

i have been assembling a cleaning train. i have a tomix cleaner running as the vacuum first, followed by small keki tank car that just spreads cleaner on the rails, followed by a center line heavy brass roller car. im hoping this will provide the right order. first suck up the loose stuff then spread cleaner then scrub it with the roller car.

 

if you have a lot of scenery junk on the rails now i would really attack it by hand with cleaner and semi abrasive surfaces (ie not a brigh boy, but maybe a light scrub sponge surface). i doubt the track cleaning cars will get that stuff off your rails. what they do help is to just pick up the oil and crud mixture that comes from running trains.

 

BTW JRM is currently cleaning all our track piece by piece by hand and boy is it dirty! we go over a lot of it at shows with paper towels and isopropanol but folks are reporting ending up with very black cleaning cloths! we have used the tomix and also a small wiping cleaning car some, but nothing like a good hand cleaning once and a while! i hope to start using the cleaning train on the tracks much more regularly on the club layout if we can get the time!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Guest ___]

Bernard,

 

well they are different in how they work. the aztec and centerline are pretty simple just drag a roller soaked in cleaner over the tops of the rails. very good for picking up the general grease and oil that you get from running rains along with the dust and schmutz that it attracts.

 

the tomix can do rail polishing like this, but it does it with a small rotating pad. this can stick at some points folks have found and it a very small surface area compared to the centerline/aztec rollers for cleaning. they also have abrasive discs you can use if you are an abrasive type! the thing i really like about the tomix is the vacuum cleaner feature. this is wonderful to pick up the hairs and puzz that are the things that love to get sucked up into truck gears.

 

one thing folks generally report with track cleaning like this is to make sure to run the cleaning train for a while when using cleaner as it takes a few loops for the stuff to start loosening and then get stripped off sometimes. also some folks will run cleaning trains with trains with dirty wheels in order for the cleaner on the tracks to loosen the crud on the dirty wheels that then gets deposited on the track and then picked up by the cleaning cars. i dont have many trains with really dirty wheels like this, but i can see how it could work. one problem with this solution though is the worry if you have traction tires they could get attacked by your cleaning fluid. luckily most traction tires seem immune to the gentler cleaners.

 

i have been assembling a cleaning train. i have a tomix cleaner running as the vacuum first, followed by small keki tank car that just spreads cleaner on the rails, followed by a center line heavy brass roller car. im hoping this will provide the right order. first suck up the loose stuff then spread cleaner then scrub it with the roller car.

 

if you have a lot of scenery junk on the rails now i would really attack it by hand with cleaner and semi abrasive surfaces (ie not a brigh boy, but maybe a light scrub sponge surface). i doubt the track cleaning cars will get that stuff off your rails. what they do help is to just pick up the oil and crud mixture that comes from running trains.

 

BTW JRM is currently cleaning all our track piece by piece by hand and boy is it dirty! we go over a lot of it at shows with paper towels and isopropanol but folks are reporting ending up with very black cleaning cloths! we have used the tomix and also a small wiping cleaning car some, but nothing like a good hand cleaning once and a while! i hope to start using the cleaning train on the tracks much more regularly on the club layout if we can get the time!

 

Jef, do you ever run the TOMIX with the vacuum on and with cleaning solution ion the car, and does it matter what type of cleaning solution is used in the TOMIX? I'm contemplating when the money situation turns around as to buying two TOMIX cars and double vac as my layout is prone to heavy dust from the vent overhead, and the fact that no one in the house is willing to split the cost to have the recovery vent cleaned by a service tech.

[cteno4]

Aaron,

 

have never tried to use the vacuum and cleaner spread at the same time. thinking that it would be better to just run around doing the vacuum first a few times to suck up the dust as when the cleaner goes down i think it might muck up all the dust into something that would not vacuum up. you should be able to run the vacuum and spread cleaner at the same time, just would run it with the direction with the vacuum in front and cleaner spreader behind (reverse of the way you run it when you have the cleaning pad on and spread cleaner where you want cleaner to go down first then pad rub it around the top of the rail.

 

you can borrow one of mine to play with and see if it helps. also just a small diameter vacuum tube extension on your vacuum cleaner might help really suck off the tracks when its bad in the exposed areas.

 

we always used the tomix track cleaner in the tomix car, but isopropyl alcohol would work fine in it and probably most rail cleaners out there ast the tomix stuff smells like it has a mix of organics in there! i dont have a bottle of the stuff right now, but i think it actually has an ingredients list on it.

 

for good track cleaning with cleaner the aztec or centerline seem to be the best way to go as they really put a cleaning surface over the top of the rail and down the sides of the heads some where as the tomix only hits the top. folks report the brass roller wheels with the old handiwipe covers really end up getting off a lot of dirt from the tracks.

 

how about putting one of those vent filters on the air duct over the layout? will cut the air flow a bit, but may get rid of the main dust.

 

also have had good luck with air cleaners when i have had dust problems in a room. leaving it on over night seems to help get rid of a lot of the dust in the room that the heat/ac air then just stirs up and moves around. i talked to the heater guys when they were replacing our furnace about if there was anything to doing a duct cleaning and they thought it was all pretty bogus unless you have a lot of the flexible ribbed duct work in the house and even then they said having a big dust problem was more a function of how good your furnace filter is.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Guest ___]

have never tried to use the vacuum and cleaner spread at the same time. thinking that it would be better to just run around doing the vacuum first a few times to suck up the dust as when the cleaner goes down i think it might muck up all the dust into something that would not vacuum up. you should be able to run the vacuum and spread cleaner at the same time, just would run it with the direction with the vacuum in front and cleaner spreader behind (reverse of the way you run it when you have the cleaning pad on and spread cleaner where you want cleaner to go down first then pad rub it around the top of the rail

 

I think sooner or later I'm going to grab one of those. They sell the cleaner with a diesel engine now that I like for a hundred bucks.

[Bernard]

Have you guys seen this track cleaning car?

It's from Tony's trains, it looks interesting but not the price. :o

 

http://www.tonystrains.com/gallery/cmx/cmx_n_1.htm

[Guest ___]

That's cause it's brass.

[cteno4]

Seen a few posts on this model on other lists in the past and had good reviews. From the all the cleaning posts i have read i think the over all best reviews have come from the aztec and centerline type of brass roller cleaners. these give a rolling action whereas the other one is the drag the pad style, which i do worry may hang on points and such.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Welshbloke]

I take it the spare truck/bogie is to allow the set to run as a normal train, rather than grinding the rails all the time?

 

Someone is selling half a 92007 on ebay UK at the moment - just the cleaning half. I've put a bid on it but don't expect to win. In the unlikely event of success I'll partner it with any spare locos I have to hand while keeping an eye open for the proper power car.

[CaptOblivious]

Update on the overpriced EF81 saga. Seller recently had it up for auction, with a buy-it-now price of about $250, and a reserve. It fetched one bid for $10 (not me!). Seller declined sale, and reposted here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=400049416043

Only $163!! Get it while you can!

 

You'd think after two auctions, and about four buy-it-now sales that he would figure out that he was asking too much for it…

 

The track cleaner, which I haven't been watching so closely, is now only $228!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=400034205254

[Bernard]

Yes but for that $228.00, not only do you get the track cleaner car but the "ginsu knives", plus if you order now, the seller will personally clean your tracks.  ;D

[Mudkip Orange]

So whatever happened to this guy? I just looked and the only unreasonably-priced EF81 is an HO Scale Tomix model from plazajapan. But that makes sense - Japanese HO is always expensive!

[CaptOblivious]

So whatever happened to this guy? I just looked and the only unreasonably-priced EF81 is an HO Scale Tomix model from plazajapan. But that makes sense - Japanese HO is always expensive!

 

He's still there, just checked tonight. His stuff doesn't seem to be listed with the other model train stuff. Do a search in descriptions for "Tomix 92007" to find the seller.