Was visiting a friend's layout and saw him cleaning his diesel loco's wheels by pouring a small amount of solvent on a paper towel, laying it on the tracks, and letting his locos spin their wheels against the towel until they were clean. Seemed to work like a charm, and it was *quick*! So when I needed to clean some wheels last week I tried same, and it worked just fine for me too.
Until last night when I using the test track and discovered that the solvent had flowed down onto the plastic ties -causing them to soften and shrink as they dried out- and pulling the affected sections of rail circa 1 mm closer to each other than they had been... resulting in rails with a "bottleneck" like so >
Well, there is 'crud' solvent and there is plastic solvent. If you use the plastic solvent, you will need to replace plastic tie track. Use a plastic compatible solvent.
It is unhealthy, bad for your trains ond your layout.
We use a glassfiber pencil, loco on it "back" in some foam, and a short piece of track to power the wheels. It takes 30 seconds to clean a 6 axel loco...
Um, why aren't you using 91% alcohol? That's the preferred method at my RR club. Take a paper towel or napkin and put some alcohol on it. Lay it on the rail next to the loco, then run 1/2 the loco over the towel. Hold the loco and spin the drivers. The crud comes off, leaving the wheels nice and clean. The great thing about alcohol is that it doesn't attack plastic, it evaporates quickly, and leaves no film. It will, however, strip some kinds of paint if soaked long enough. But as long as you haven't painted your ties, you should be all set (oh, and don't get any on the loco's paint job, of course). It shouldn't be a problem...my club's been using alcohol to clean wheels for the past 8 years without any trouble at all. Alcohol also works on cars, too. Soak a paper towel and lay it on the rails, then run the car rapidly back and forth over the towel. The crud comes off the wheels (it just takes a little more effort).
Paul A. Cutler III
************* Weather Or No Go New Haven
*************
Me and my bottle of carbon tetrachloride scoff at your glassfiber pencils. (Just kidding. I draw the line at cumulative poisons, though people did use carbon tet before it was banned for home use.)
I do use denatured alcohol for cleaning wheels and track sometimes. It's pretty benign. Just don't drink it or spill it all over everything, or set it on fire.
Cordially yours: Gerard P. President, a box of track and a gappy table.
The denatured alcohol I use is Parks', which according to the MSDS is 93-96% ethanol, the remainder being methanol, methyl isobutyl ketone, ethyl acetate, and gasoline, in that order. Most of the hazards of the mixture are due to the ethanol, not the other chemicals added to make it poisonous and undrinkable. Ethanol in large doses does indeed produce neurotoxic effects. It has gotten to me once or twice, but it wasn't from skin absorption.
Don't wash the hands with it, for heaven's sake don't drink it, and don't let the vapors accumulate, and wear a respirator when using it as a spraypaint solvent. A pair of nitrile gloves from the hardware store are enough to keep it out of the skin, and I am not really chemophobic enough for the smell to bother me, in the small quantities I use. I certainly don't think there's any reason to avoid using the less hazardous solvents like denatured alcohol and mineral spirits, as long as proper precautions are used. It's easy enough to find out what those proper precautions are.
I don't know what I'd wash grease off parts with, if I didn't use them.
The glass-fiber pencil is a good idea, though. I read of its use in cleaning scratchbuilt models in MODEL ENGINEER, but I'd never thought of using it on wheels. Do note that the dust it makes is probably quite irritating to the skin.
Cordially yours: Gerard P. President, a box of track and a gappy table.
Hmm; there aren't actually that many solvents that will "attack" (i.e., dissolve) things like plastic ties. In fact, I can only think of a few, some of which go by different names: lacquer thinner (aka acetone), MEK and related solvents (and fer gawd's sake I hope you don't even *think* of using those nasty substances!). Alcohol will definitely not dissolve them.
Most petroleum-based solvents, including paint thinner, charcoal lighter, etc., shouldn't affect plastic ties at all. (You can and should, of course, test them first.) You must have used something like acetone.
On 9/29/2007 10:44 AM snipped-for-privacy@gannon.edu spake thus:
Of all the solvents I use, denatured alcohol is really about the most benign, given a minimal level of care exercised in its use. Even skin contact is not a really big deal with it (as it is with, say, chlorinated hydrocarbons which you *really, really* don't want on your skin at all).
They're thin, similar to latex exam gloves. I wouldn't use them for chemicals that posed significant hazards, of course. Naturally any gloves will make it difficult to do detail work, but in fact I generally clean parts, let them dry, then work with them...and also in fact, I only use the gloves when I absolutely can't avoid spilling solvent on my hands. Generally I clean parts by putting them in a small jar, pouring in a small amount of solvent, and swishing around, then cleaning further with a small brush, often a paintbrush, shaking off the solvent, and allowing everything to air-dry. I am actually a lot more careful than most amateurs around solvents, minimizing exposure and spillage and keeping significant amounts covered.
Now, I did use heavy nitrile gloves when I was working at an electric motor shop, with my hands in a tank of Safety-Kleen solvent for a good portion of the day, but that was a different story.
Your Interflon Metal Clean spray is about 50% naphtha, which is another good solvent, and available at hardware stores, but I don't use it very much, as it is more hazardous than alcohol (0.9% in air is flammable, vs. 4.3% for ethanol, and naphta has a little lower flash point, 10 deg C vs 12 deg C. ) Its vapor is twice as heavy as ethanol vapor, which is 1.6 the density of air, so it will accumulate near the floor if the ventilation is poor. (Stoddard solvent "mineral spirits" vapor will do the same, but the flash point is 38 deg C)
At any rate, I only use very small quantities of any solvent indoors, and clean larger parts outside, where the water heater isn't. I don't use sprayed solvents indoors, either. Nor do I soak rags in the stuff and squeeze them all over everything. I'm not stupid.
Cordially yours: Gerard P. President, a box of track and a gappy table.
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