I'm looking for an engine with a factory installed capacitor to go across short sections of dirty track on T-Trak layouts.? Does such a thing exist?? I don't need any long period of? "keep-alive", maybe one second for really dirty sections.? Thanks for any advice.

Geoff Dunn

I'm looking for an engine with a factory installed capacitor to go across short sections of dirty track on T-Trak layouts.? Does such a thing exist?? I don't need any long period of? "keep-alive", maybe one second for really dirty sections.? Thanks for any advice.

Geoff Dunn

The NGS Hunslet shunter/switcher comes with stay alive,and runs on analogue or digital systems?

On 6 Nov 2024 23:45, "Geoff Dunn via " <geoffdunnsoccer=[email protected]> wrote:

I'm looking for an engine with a factory installed capacitor to go across short sections of dirty track on T-Trak layouts.? Does such a thing exist?? I don't need any long period of? "keep-alive", maybe one second for really dirty sections.? Thanks for any advice.

Geoff Dunn

If it was a home layout, I could clean the track.? But this is for a temporary T-Trak layout, where track cleaning does happen but track conditions are likely to be imperfect somewhere on the layout.? (And some people don't want some cleaning processes done on their modules - I don't like Bright Boys, for example).

Thanks for the suggestion though.

Geoff

On Wednesday, November 6, 2024 at 10:46:23 PM EST, Jeffrey Reynolds <cteno4@...> wrote:

Hi Geoff,

You might give a try doing some track cleaning with a low dielectric cleaner like CRM or WD40 contact cleaners. Great articles a number of years ago on what makes most dirty track and it’s oxidized metal (the black gunk) that is created by micro arcing between the rails and the wheels. This micro arcing is greatly enhanced by many high dielectric cleaners (many rail cleaners and isopropanol) that can get trapped in micro fissures in the rails and wheels. So this explains how at times the harder you cleaned the more gunk that would show up! Very vicious circle.

Using the low dielectric cleaners purges the old cleaners (and water) from the micro fissures and coats the micro fissures with the Lowe dielectric cleaners which don’t facilitate micro arcing.

Long story short, once you have cleaned your rails with a good low dielectric cleaner the rails stay remarkably clean for quite a while and recleaning is pretty easy later.

Give the article a read?

Btw folks have done quite good keep alives in larger n scale engines using dense tantalium brick caps and also super capacitors. But it does take some space so small engines may be harder to find the space to pack them in and wire them.

Jeff (I was almost a Geoff!)

On Nov 6, 2024, at 10:24?PM, Geoff Dunn via <geoffdunnsoccer=[email protected]> wrote:

Thanks.? Despite the spelling of my name, I'm American.? I'm looking more for a US prototype, but it's good to know that one manufacturer at least has done this.

Geoff

I doubt there would be the room in a small shunter for the space caps would take for a keep alive. This is DCC, correct? A lot to stuff in there with decoder, keep alive board and caps.

Sorry, don’t mean to beat this to death, but track cleaning is really the essential solution to this problem, especially in a group situation. For my lifetime of model railroading track cleaning has been this existential (almost religious) question until recently when that article came out with some real science of what’s going on, very tangible results with low dielectric cleaners, why oils work (but they have a ton of drawbacks), and explaining why isopropanol and other higher dialectic cleaners actually created more gunk.

We clean track all the time on our club layout, it’s part of being in a club and working together. Luckily everyone is fine in our club with careful cleaning as no one likes seeing trains stutter or stop. The contact cleaner sprayed on a piece of cotton cloth is easy to rub with a finger carefully. Doesn’t take hard scrubbing just repeated wipes until dark likes on the cloth stop showing up over a section you are cleaning, If a member has a problem with someone else cleaning their track then they can do it themselves. The cleaning just needs to be something effective on their modules and it also not adversely effect other modules (black gunk gets on wheels and the can travel). Things like isopropanol and oils can easily move to other neighboring modules and wheels and thus be offensive to other members and cause issues. I agree the abrasive methods are not great as they just micro pit the track more and brightboys can leave residue (I know I’ve wiped it up in the past off brightboy cleaned track).

It is amazing the results we have had that have lasted long periods of time. As a club you might start a discussion on this as once the group starts to see it works it may bring everyone around. Ttrak is great as there are minimum of standards for a module like track height and spacing, electrical polarity and plugs are required, but clean track is also required for the whole to operate well and thus has to be part of the standard.

About every show to every other show we have a small spot problem show up and in a minute it’s cleaned and that’s it for the show. If things are slow we may just do a whole layout wipe down once or twice a year, this takes all of less than a minute per module. The contact cleaners are engineered to keep the hydrophilic stuff out of the fissures in the metal, but do need some refreshing from time to time as some micro arcing does occur even with nicely cleaned track. Also the places I’ve seen repeated gunk buildup are nearer track joints, track with street built up between and around the rails, and points. These are places I think wheels may be lifted up and down a tiny bit and create more micro arcing. I’ve been watching this the last few years carefully and it seems consistent. These situations can also make small shutters stutter as well even with clean track so amending them helps.

Btw one train that runs a lot of the time on our Japanese themed Ttrak is a small 3 axle Tomix shunter pulling our sushi train. It runs like a champ at slow speeds for hours on the Ttrak even with it being prone to jostles and such at joints with only the close 3 axles. We also have good success with many 4 axle motor cars that have traction tires on 2 wheels, so down to only 6 wheel pickup.

Best of luck on this.

Jeff

> On Nov 7, 2024, at 6:44?AM, Geoff Dunn via <geoffdunnsoccer=[email protected]> wrote:
>
> If it was a home layout, I could clean the track.? But this is for a temporary T-Trak layout, where track cleaning does happen but track conditions are likely to be imperfect somewhere on the layout.? (And some people don't want some cleaning processes done on their modules - I don't like Bright Boys, for example).
>
> Thanks for the suggestion though.
>
> Geoff