Track Magic

[B.Meldon]

Point blades will be either a super fine emery (3000) or a tiny brush with contact cleaner on it.

Experience many years ago has shown me that no mater how often or how well you clean the 009 point blades the electrical switching will always fail at the worst possible moment...and then it will do it again just after you clean it!
This is why I always fit frog polarity switches to every point, not just 009 but all my standard gauge 00 points as well.

[clayliner]

To maximise electrical contact, should we clean the inside shoulder of the rail head as well, or just the top?

David.

[Graeme Dunbar]

I suspect it will have minimal effect. If you take a short length of straight track, place a loco on it and look at it head on you should be able to see just how much side to side play there is. I think the chance that the flanges will make contact could be slim.

If anything I try to clean just over the edge by holding the cleaning pad at a slight angle to each rail after giving the tops a good clean.

[JulienW]

To maximise electrical contact, should we clean the inside shoulder of the rail head as well, or just the top?

David.

As Graeme suggests the effects of cleaning the inside shoulder of the rails as well as the rail head may be minimal, but it will allow a bit more area for pick up if / when the flanges touch, and such additional pick up is not doing to be detrimental to the loco's performance

[clayliner]

My thinking - and apologies for getting 'techie' about it - was that wheels generally have flanges and presumably there's a reason for that: they help to keep vehicles on the rails and that is by exerting lateral forces on the rails (or, to put it another way, the rails exert forces on the wheel flanges).

This may not matter too much on straight track, but presumably there's a significant amount of contact on curves, if the flanges are doing their job?

David.

[Terry Metcalfe]

I have tried all sorts of potions to improve the running of a layout.  Track Magic has not achieved this and I avoid using it.

My suggestions are:

Clean rails and wheels using track rubber and IPA.

Use long wheelbase locomotives and stay alives fitted to decoders