Centerline track cleaner car

NO ONE LIKES it, but we all must do it: clean our track. We can clean our track by hand with an abrasive pad or a cloth soaked with appropriate cleaning fluid (careful in the tunnels), or we take the easy way out and let our locomotives do the work, pulling or pushing a track-cleaning car.

Centerline’s patented track-cleaning car takes a different approach from the normal pad-beneath-a-flatcar design. Centerline’s car literally works like a paint roller in reverse.

Within the heavy brass frame of the car is a free floating knap-covered roller, capped on both ends. To clean your track, fill the roller with coins to give it some weight, saturate its knap with a track-cleaning fluid, and run the car around your layout a few laps.

The roller moves freely but is held above the rails by the car body. The weight of the coins causes the roller to press down on the rails, absorbing dirt and grime. Since the roller spins, the nap does not snag on switch points or rough track joints, a possibility with fixed-pad track cleaning cars.

Centerline uses Weaver plastic trucks, which, if you desire, can easily be swapped for die-cast trucks. The car can negotiate O-27 curves and switches. The roller can also be used dry.

I cleaned my home layout using the Centerline car and a liquid citrus cleaner called Goo Gone, which is recommended by Centerline. As the photos attest, I went through several rollers and all of them picked up an embarrassing amount of filth. Besides cleaning the rails, the Centerline car also cleaned the wheels of whatever else was in the track-cleaning “maintenance of way” train.

Centerline suggests washing dirty rollers with a load of socks and then reusing them. I gave it a shot, and surprisingly it worked. Replacement rollers are available, and mini-paint roller covers – available at paint and hardware stores – can also be substituted once cut to the proper length.

As the photo shows, the Centerline car can fill an important role on anyone’s maintenance equipment roster.