# Track cleaner - quick and dirty :-)



## clausheupel (Jan 27, 2005)

Hi folks,

after "swiffering" the dust off my track this afternoon (works really fine!) as usual I was too lazy to scrape the rails with my "rubber block" (you all know these thingies available at the model railroad suppliers?), so I made up my mind about a simple track cleaning car.

And here is what I ended up with after 20 minutes:

I cut off a piece of that "cleaning block", made 2 hooks from a thin aluminium sheet (again one of those obsolete 3.5" floppy was sacrificed for this purpose), CA-superglued these hooks to the rubber so they fit into the "cow-bar" of a TYCO Hummer. Then I glued 2 tiny neo mags (found inside a slaughtered CD-ROM drive - BTW: you find neat little things inside a lot of PC stuff like streamer tape drives, hard disks etc.!) to the rubber to give an appropriate downforce.

Works really great! Only a couple of laps and the track rails are shiny again! :thumbsup: 

Here´s the pics:




























Greetings from Germany,

Claus


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## neophytte (Sep 14, 2006)

Heh  I was cleaning my rails on my routed test track over the weekend and used a similar trick ... nice Hummer BTW ...


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## 1976Cordoba (Sep 20, 2000)

Excellent idea! :thumbsup: 

So what kind of lap times are ya turning? :devil:


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## bobhch (Apr 22, 2007)

*Noooooooooooooooooooooo not the Floppy!!!!!!!*

Claus,

O.K. this is just plain, messing around with tiny stuff to make a track rail cleaner, Cool!  

Oooooh and my Digital Sony Mavica uses those so called obsolete Floppy Disc. The Wife bought me a new camera recently but, figured that we had our Dell fitted to take Floppys so, still have not changed over yet.  

Could never cut up a Floppy...  How could you? lol :lol: 










Bob...zilla


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## JordanZ870 (Nov 25, 2004)

Great track cleaner, Claus!


Bob, that tank of a camera come with jack-stands, back support and a ceiling hook?


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## tjd241 (Jan 25, 2004)

*Great idea !*

Scavenger hunts turn up all kinds of goodies we can use. nd


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## win43 (Aug 28, 2006)

Great track cleaner.


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## videojimmy (Jan 12, 2006)

nice track cleaner... now you need to add a trailer with a wipe on the underside so it can pick up what the cleaner leaves behined, like an Oscar. I saw a Tyco train turned into a great cleaner. the first car had the stones and the second car had the wiper


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## roadrner (Jul 21, 1999)

Great setup, and it works too. Can't beat that. Now I need to find one of those Hummers.  rr


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## clausheupel (Jan 27, 2005)

*Development => "Swiffer sled" alert! *

Hi folks,

thanks for all your encouraging comments! VJ´s input finally forced me to build some kind of "Swiffer sled" for my Hummer:

Piled 3 sheets of balsa wood with a recessed mag (the one in the pic proofed to be far too strong, now there are 2 tiny neos like these seen on the rear of my "sanding block" above!):




























And that´s what the Swiffer cloth looks like after only one lap around my track (which I thought I had thoroughly wiped down only 2 days before!):










Happy track cleaning! :hat: 

Greetings from Germany,

Claus


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## 1976Cordoba (Sep 20, 2000)

clausheupel said:


>


Outstanding! :thumbsup:


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## Bill Hall (Jan 6, 2007)

Diggen'it Claus!


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## bobhch (Apr 22, 2007)

Way Kool Claus....that is sooooooooooooooo freakin" Cool.  

Bob...zilla


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## videojimmy (Jan 12, 2006)

you rock Claus!


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## TK Solver (Mar 18, 2004)

This is so cool!


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## grungerockjeepe (Jan 8, 2007)

Now you just need to make a Zamboni body for that chassis and you'd be good to roll! But these are great ideas that I need to work on myself.


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