Cleaning track is a necessary part of the hobby if you want reliable operation, but I hate it. It seems my klutz factor hits a thousand when I do. Using an abrasive block or a rag with a cleaning solution, I seem to always hit or snag whatever lineside structure takes the most time to repair. Over the years, I have tried virtually every style of track cleaning car that has been offered. While some did a reasonably good job, they all seemed to share an ability to snag switch points, any uneven joints and derail.

Centerline Products is offering the most effective track cleaner I have ever seen. Centerline’s Rail Cleaner does not snag anything nor does it derail -- it just cleans track.

The Centerline Rail Cleaner carbody is a solid silicon-bronze casting which serves to guide a free-floating knurled brass roller. The roller holds a strip of Handi-Wipe brand of "dishcloth" and, through a limited-slip action, scrubs the rail surface as it is hauled by a locomotive. The Handi-Wipe is wrapped around the roller and acts as a reservoir for cleaning fluid and soaks up the grime as it is loosened from the rails. Centerline came up with the idea of the heavy roller and was ingenious enough to have the cleaning material also serve as an insulator, which allows the use of the solid brass roller. That folks, is thinking.

The Centerline Rail Cleaner has one hundred percent cleaning action on both railheads at all times, and it is not abrasive, nor does it leave any particles or residue. The body of the car is built to NMRA standard width to allow it to clean in HO curves of as little as 18" radius on an industrial track. This is the sharpest curve I have and the car should take even smaller radii. As a result of this full width, the car may not clear some industry platforms, other closely spaced structures, or what-have-you on spurs. This is not a problem. When you can keep the mainline and passing sidings clean, the spur tracks will remain clean. The car easily clears all adjacent cars, engines, structures or whatever on all tracks with the common two inch centers.

I received the car the day before an operating session on the Wyanet. The car comes with truck-mounted X2F couplers. I replaced these with Kadee trucks outfitted with truck-mounted couplers and placed the material around the roller. While one might be tempted to try household cleaners on the cloth -- don’t. The common household cleaners such as Formula 409 and Fantastic do clean rails very well, but the slight film that creeps down the sides of the rails will eventually cause corrosion problems and therefor should be avoided. (I found out about this the hard way, naturally, and had to replace some corroded switch points; they became in-operative.) A much better fluid to use might be mineral spirits, which has no corrosive properties, or one of the proven model railroad track cleaning fluids available from several manufacturers. No-ox and other electrical cleaners should also work.

On the matter of clearances, the track cleaning car hit one switchstand mounted too close to the mainline; time to fix that anyway. It derailed once when the coupler swing of the engine hauling the car dragged the Centerline car off the rails. The car operates reliably.

Establishing that I do not like to clean track will help others understand how much I hate to clean wheels. This is another necessary chore. It takes up an incredible amount of time, and it is a boring job. By the time you clean all eight wheels on every car, check the gauge after the cleaning, etc., 15 minutes and more often a half an hour has elapsed.

As a result, I had not cleaned car wheels on the Dixon, Wyanet & Lake Superior for over 15 years, and the cars were beginning to derail because of dirt buildup on the wheels. I decided to try out the Centerline Rail Cleaner as a wheel cleaner. The material was saturated with track cleaning fluid and the Centerline car was run coupled ahead of a string of cars out of Defiance Yard. The result after a trip over the layout was clean wheels. The wheelsets of Athern cars that have been in service for over 20 years looked like they had just been pulled out of the kit box. I mean they shined!

I ran the wheel cleaning train with three RS1’s (don’t tell anybody this old reprobate has bought any diesels). On the return trip, there was so much crud deposited on the rails by the wheels that all three RS1’s stalled out and I had to run the Centerline car ahead of the diesels to allow them to make contact.

The net result was that the 130 cars in Defiance Yard had their 1,140 wheels cleaned in just two hours of running trains. This took no real effort, there was no damage to the cars from being handled, no wheelsets knocked out of gauge or any other problems. I should have thought about where all that dirt would go (on the rails) but it, too, was eliminated by the cleaning car.

The best indication of my opinion of this tool is that by the time you read this, I will have bought a second Centerline Rail Cleaner and will be running it with dry material behind the wheel trains to pick up any black crud left by the wheels. (Just remember to provide adequate ventilation if you use a petroleum-based solvent for the track cleaning fluid. Such cleaners are flammable and should be handled with due respect.)