Several month ago (mid 2013?) happened something very unusual to my layout. Most of the wheels collected excessive dirt.
The top photo shows how the dirt sticks like a rubber tire on the wheel. The black mountain on the lower photo is the dirt of that one wheel removed with a small screw driver. The dirt is very robust. I use a rotary brass brush in my Dremel to clean the wheels.
I cleaned lots of wheels and the rails and the excessive amount of dirt never returned.
The layout is a home office room in a condominium in the 4.th floor. There are no pets etc. The floor is mostly parquet flooring with only very few small rugs. Do you have any clue what may have happened?




I must have forgotten to clean some cars but stored them away. I found them today when I changed the layout theme and had my "fun" cleaning them too.

Is your layout on the floor by any chance???

Genetk44 Wrote:Is your layout on the floor by any chance???

It is at 32" height around the walls of the room installed
An old photo:

Reinhard you say that you live in a condominium, do you have a air conditioning system to heat and cool your appartment? A forced ventilation system is great for introducing air borne dusts to rooms.
Some of that crud that was on those wheel sets appeared to be fibres possibly synthetic, I am wondering if some electrostatic attraction is involved. Do you and your family wear mostly natural fibres or synthetics or a mix?
Then, again its a bit like belly button fluff, just wearing clothes and doing things generates the stuff.
We live in a dirty dirty world.

Mark

There is no air condition etc. installed. The fibers stick to the wheel because the black stuff is so sticky. You can find the black sticky stuff on all rails if I run a train with dirty wheel on the layout and vise versa. It is there for extreme important to clean all tracks and wheels at the same time.

I had that extreme effect only one time and I may remember the reason.
I used glue out of the rattle can to glue the paper backdrop buildings to card board. I did that on my desk with the fiddle yard behind. There was a lot of that stick glue on the paper under the backdrop/card board but also a nice amount on the not covered table. May be that sprayed also on the tracks of the fiddle yard and was transferred all over the layout and all wheels with the next trains. The fresh glue is virtually opaque and therefor invisible.
The glue used must be applied on both sides, wait 5 minutes and press them together. The glue will stay sticky a very long time if you spray it on one side only (the unprotected table and parts of the fiddle yard?).

I assume the "black stuff" is the old opaque glue with all fibers, dust, dirt etc. that stick to it.

Hello Reinhard, as soon as we start heating the house due to cold weather conditions the "fiber threads" start appearing on the wheels and trucks.
IMO it's due to static electricity caused by dry air and wheel friction on the rails.
I recently had to clean all the wheels on my locos, it's a pain to remove all these little pieces of fiber.
The rest of the rolling stock will be cleaned when the heating will be turned off.

Good luck!

My solution to the "static dirt" problem was to place a filter where the heating/central air conditioning vent enters my layout room. It's very dry here in the Colorado mountains, and static buildup is quite common. On many days I can create a spark when I walk across a room and touch the light switch. At night, the small, blue spark is clearly visible! 8-)

You might consider adding some humidity to your room to counter it, and you could also consider an electrostatic air filter which will precipitate the offending particles from the air.

Low humidity is a problem in the winter time like now. There are three humidifier running in the condominium. One in my room that helps to keep the humidity above 40%.

Turn off the lights and run a locomotive. If you have visible sparks, each spark creates a bit of black carbon that can be picked up by the wheels of the following cars. I think the carbon may be a bit sticky and result in dirt build up. You also might try using a portable room air purifier with a hepa filter in the office where your railroad is located. Also on the Model Railroad Hobbyist forum, there has been an extensive discussion on using a coat of graphite on the rails. The guys who have tried graphite, thoroughly clean the rails and the wheels on both the locomotives and the rolling stock. They then rub a graphite stick on all of the rails of their layout. The graphite stops the arcing between the locomotive wheels and the rails.

Maybe a dumb question, but did you get any new locomotives recently? Perhaps one of your engines is leaving a grease/oil trail?

I do not remember if I got a new engine at that time but the amount of dirt on more than 50 cars must have a more severe source. I assume I did it myself with the glue out of the rattle can. That would be enough glue to make that mess.

Righto, every car and loco off the layout. Clean all track. Then clean each piece of rolling stock before it goes back.
[attachment=22434]

David, yes, that is it what I did. It is the only way to get rid of the mess. Where it is important to remove all cars and engines, clean all tracks and put only throughly cleaned cars and engines back.
A problem is I did not notice the problem right away and stored a bunch of cars without cleaning. That requires a careful inspection of each car when it comes from the cabinet back on the layout or the black glue will be back too.

Reinhard,The type of gook that builds upon our rails is unbelievable but,I will give you a short list that was noted in a MR article on cleaning track several years ago.Metal or plastic wheels didn't seem to make much of a difference.

The list contain electrical residual,human and pet dandruff,human skin flakes,bug droppings,dust mites,household dust and other microscopic items.

Brakie Wrote:.....Metal or plastic wheels didn't seem to make much of a difference.....

I have a story just for curiosity

Many years ago when I had a German based layout needed the tracks to be cleaned throughly and intensive. I got some kind of solvent on a cotton fabric and whipped all the rails. I use a lot of solvent to be sure to get all dirt removed for sure. The cotton got those nasty black stripes and the rails looked shiny as new.
I put an engine with some cars on the layout and it went on wonderful for some time. It went worse after some minutes and the engine got serve pickup problems within some minutes. After 10 minutes the layout was virtually useless. I looked at the fresh cleaned rails and they were covered with a thin black layer. It was even worse at gaps, frogs etc.
I had a lot of cars with plastic wheels at that time. You guess right, the wheels and the residual solvent became very good and intense friends and partially melted down in love......
No more plastic wheels for me please. It took me three days to clean the tracks from melted plastic!

Just a story many years ago and not related to the intense dirt about a year ago.