Gunk, Goo, Funk

Having put my dreams of building foam risers aside for the moment, I decided to have a little fun and run some trains around my lone circle.  While I was running some of my newer locomotives, that I just learned had something called scale engines in them, I began to wonder if perhaps some of the cars the locomotives were pulling were contributing factors in the less than stellar performance.

The answer was of course, though I am not a giant fan of scale engines, some of my rolling stock was horrendous.

All of my rolling stock is around 30 years old. I am really sort of surprised I hadn't noticed the condition of some if it prior to tonight, but better late than never!

I decided the break out some tools to restore the wheels to their former glory. I grabbed some old dental tools I had laying around and my Dremel.

At first I tried to simply use the wire brush on the Dremel to whisk my troubles away, but the gunk was so thick it mostly just smeared it around. What I ended up doing was using one of the more flat bladed dental tools to lightly scrape up the years of goo and then finished them off with a quick go over on the Dremel.

We have not put in place a new train rule. No car goes on the track without wheel check and cleaning.

(Super Special Note: Always wear safety glasses when using a Dremel or other motorized tools! Ouch!)