TRACK CLEANING is a big subject among modellers and can be a heated one too. Most modellers develop some regime which works for them and what works will depend on the size of the layout, scale and where it is situated.
Isopropyl Alcohol or Propan-2-ol (IPA) remains a favourite chemical for shifting that black grime from the rails and keeping the trains running. Certainly, IPA will clean the rails and your editor has been using it for years – until the last couple of years, as answers to the swift build-up of that all familiar black deposit have become more widely known.
Some modellers, despite religious cleaning of the rails, were finding that the back deposit soon returns to wheels and the rail head, and with it a loss of electrical conductivity. For some modellers, it seems that it could be a deal breaker as efforts to get trains running reliably were beginning to spoil the hobby for them.
So, what is that black deposit and
