track cleaner: advice wanted
 

can anyone tell me about the Dapol Model Railways B800 Non-motorised OO Track Cleaner with motorised cleaning heads and vacuum. i am thinking of buying one as my tracks are constantly getting blackened with oily deposits and its driving me mad. I know i could be going round it with meth and a cloth but its so boring and meth stinks so i only do it sparingly - and that's not enough. does anyone know if this product could save me any work? its £52 from ehattons so i wouldnt want to waste money by buying it and being disappointed.

thanks:D

Save your money buy a sheet of the finest wet and dry paper cut it into 4 and rub

We have one for our Club Layouts. Makes life a lot easier and gives us more 'Play' time. It does a fantastic job of removing any track pins and other ferrous metallic stuff on the lines butt we thing that the abrasive pads are a little too abrasive. We are experimenting at the moment. A good buy!

just in your opinion

do you think it is good?

and does it do the job?

ive got one of the hornby track cleaner cars and it is totally crap

Try "Super Servisol" (for PC boards). It may work on your train tracks.

PLEASE BE CAREFUL with where you spray/put SERVISOL. I speak from very unhappy past experience of the stuff. Having purchased a can I sprayed it on and in all sorts of contacts/switches/volume & tone controls. A great improvement in all cases. BUT! After about seven weeks I got a complaint from the Mother-in-law that there was a problem with their record deck. A plastic component had totally disintegrated. A few days later a socket on our TV set came away in my hand. Then my daughter complained that her Radio/Cassette wouldn't tune. Then a tranny radio lost a socket. The falling apart went on and on. Nothing that I had used the stuff on seemed to be immune. I reckon that a can of that stuff which I paid about 75p for (Mid 80's) cost me in the long run over £250. I can only repeat, BE CAREFUL. It has a chemical reaction with certain commonly found/used types of plastic which results in the plastic becoming crumb like after a while. As a switch/contact cleaner it works great but avoid getting it in contact with plastics at all costs.

Regards, 62440.

Thanks for that heads up, I had a feeling that Servisol reacted with certain substances.

Hello 27vet,
I use the peco track rubber an a household hoover it does the job spot on for me an the rubbers last for ages, i'm still using the first track rubber i bought an that was more than 7 years ago an it's the small one. I also have a large track rubber as well i've used that loads an it still looks like new. So save your money the track rubbers cost i think about £3 for the small one an £5 for the big one. I hope this helps.