Engine House Hobbies

Customer Product Feedback

Copyright 2010 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

There is an old proverb which states: An individual learns from their mistakes. A wise individual learns from the mistakes of others. A fool never learns.

This proverb could be rewritten to say: An individual learns from their mistakes and experience. A wise individual learns form the mistakes and experience of others, a fool never learns.

This feedback section is a collection of the wisdom, experience and mistakes of others. It is hoped that what is provided here allows you and other train enthusiasts to learn from others in  an effort to make your model railroading more enjoyable.

What is provided here are the observations of individuals utilizing the services of Engine House Hobbies. They do not necessarily reflect the observations and/or opinion of the proprietor. However, each contains information useful to the modeler and train enthusiast.

Current listed topics
Track cleaning cars

Track cleaning cars:

Here is some feedback on the RL Lines O-Gauge Cleaning Car

Pros: Uses foam rollers that should be available in hardware stores; the rollers easily come on and off

Cons: The rollers overhang the track and can hit objects on a hi-rail layout; if you angle the rollers too far inside to avoid the overhang, they’ll hit the wheels with constant pressure based on track conditions. The pressure is determined by setting the height of the spindle from 7/8” to ¾”. 7/8 produces too much pressure so that it’s hard to pull by a “normal” engine and de-rails on hi-rail Ross track. Setting the height to ¾” produces too little pressure; the car then becomes easy to pull but doesn’t clean well. Thus you have to experiment with the height. You don’t need to do this on the other types of track cleaning cars.

The other differences are:  Northeast Trains Cleaning Car uses two cloth-like pads; Trackman uses one large abrasive pad; and RL Lines uses foam. One can argue endlessly over which is the better cleaning approach but I recommend RL Lines for only the non-hi-rail Lionel tinplate track layouts (where overhang is not going to be an issue) with the caveat that the roller height will need some adjustment with a wrench Although the other track cleaners use pads that are more difficult to replace, these cleaning cars are easier to use out-of-the-box since no pressure adjustments are needed. The only major cleaning car I don’t own is the Centerline which uses a large roller with a center line perpendicular to the rails.) (Return)

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