02-01-2013, 03:36 PM
I've tried a lot of track cleaners over the years, but so far, none is a magic bullet. Several years ago I got an MNP car. These are still in stock at Walthers, although now they seem to use a 50-foot boxcar body instead of a 40-foot like this one. When I got it, I discovered it would barely work in ordinary DC, since the speed of the cleaner heads depended on track voltage, and it wasn't going to get any faster than the loco that was pulling it. However, it had a DCC decoder installed from the factory. I put it aside, but now that I'm working with DCC, I brought it out again:
The point of having the DCC decoder is that you can select the cleaner by its address, and then you can turn the head speed fast, so no matter how fast the loco is going, it will go fast enough to polish the railheads itself. It still isn't a magic bullet, but if you run it back and forth enough, it will in fact clean the track. It's useful for bridges and tunnels especially.
The point of having the DCC decoder is that you can select the cleaner by its address, and then you can turn the head speed fast, so no matter how fast the loco is going, it will go fast enough to polish the railheads itself. It still isn't a magic bullet, but if you run it back and forth enough, it will in fact clean the track. It's useful for bridges and tunnels especially.