Lux 9470 Track Cleaning Car - Any Experience?

[C855B]

My interest in building a track cleaning train has been refreshed for some reason... like spending half of yesterday polishing rail, breaking a phone pole and a tree in the process. In looking around, here's a track cleaner I hadn't seen before:

https://www.eurorailhobbies.com/product.asp?mn=27&ca=8&sc=N&stock=MISC-LUX-9470

Of course it's out of stock.    There is one on eBay from a German seller, for a mere $100 more. Uh... I'll pass.

Anyway, here's a review:

https://www.locgeek.com/2014/06/lux-modellbau-tomix-n-track-cleaning-car/

Intriguing, but not cheap. However, the CMX car is in that price bracket now, and it's a dumb, brute-force sled dragger. The Lux car is the opposite - motored scrubber wheels, keep-alive batteries, start/stop on automatic detection of movement, and DCC. Three different scrub wheels are available, felt, mild abrasive (1500 grit) and polishing.

Based on my experience with two Tomix cars and noting their relative uselessness for rail cleaning (nice as vacuums, though), the Lux car seems to be what I was designing in my mind. So... anybody here have one?

[Lemosteam]

That looks fairly easy to make for that kind of money.  Grab an old Lifelike Lead sled and slam an extra motor in there to drive a live slot car rear axle with swappable wheels.  Better yet put three of them ion these so you get mild abrasive, polishing and then felt for an all in one pass cleaning!

[C855B]

Yeah, but... buy vs. make considering everything else on my platter at the moment is squarely on the "buy" end of the scale.

[Lemosteam]

That was a note to myself! 

[Maletrain]

I think the real question is how much of what types of cleaning do you really need?  Do you really need a Bright Boy for the majority of your track?  Or, will a Homasote pad do well enough?  If the Homasote will do it, why buy a 1500 grit motorized sanding pad? Do you really need a solvent?  If so, are you happy with alcohol, or do you want to be able to use mineral spirits or contact cleaner?

I am also going through the process of building a routine track cleaning train.  At this point, I don't think I need a mechanized rail sanding device.  I am looking at: 1. a magnetic pickup, 2. a vacuum pickup; 3. a solvent dispenser, and 4. a string of solvent wipers/dryers.  I may use something like a Centerline or Aztec sliding/rolling pad for rubbing the rails between 3 and 4, depending on how well the solvent dispenser rubs the rails.  For a solvent dispenser, I bought a CMX car, because I wanted to be able to use something stronger than alcohol, and the CMX is all brass (but pricey).

I intend to pull/push these with heavy locos (probably diesel cab units) that do not have traction tires.

[John]

https://lux-modellbau.de/

[haasmarc]

I built my track cleaning train with 2 Atlas/Tomix cleaning cars and a LifeLike PA on either end.  All engines and cars are wired together.  The first cleaning car is set to vacuum and the second one uses the polishing pad with Aerocar ACT-6006 track cleaning fluid.  Works very well.  The PA's have good traction.  I put one of them on the rear so it is always running on clean rail.

You noted the Atlas cars didn't work well for you for cleaning but I have had very good luck with them.  DCC locos run great after running this train around.  Might be the ACT-6006 that makes a difference.

 








 

[C855B]

https://lux-modellbau.de/

"Durch sauberkeit mehr fahrfreude" = more driving pleasure through cleanliness. So, so Teutonic. 

Too bad the English site is "under construction". What's left of my high school German (+ Google translate) barely touches it. But it looks like fun. Clean fun - a scarce commodity around TRW. 

Interesting... one of their N scale products appears to be a catenary clearance gauge.

[learmoia]

"Durch sauberkeit mehr fahrfreude" = more driving pleasure through cleanliness. So, so Teutonic. 

Too bad the English site is "under construction". What's left of my high school German (+ Google translate) barely touches it. But it looks like fun. Clean fun - a scarce commodity around TRW. 

Interesting... one of their N scale products appears to be a catenary clearance gauge.

Choose the british page.

Disregard, I was thinking of something else.. for this I used google translate to convert the page.

[C855B]

Choose the british page.

I did, which is what elicited the comment:

Welcome to the website of LUX Modellbau
The english version of our website is still under construction.

Please check back later.

[learmoia]

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://lux-modellbau.de/&xid=17259,15700021,15700186,15700191,15700259,15700271,15700302&usg=ALkJrhjil1_3ocQNuLSecSnqOa5aJWeSMA

[Cajonpassfan]

Who needs google to translate. Doesn’t everyone know what a Schienenschleifwagen is?
They also have a companion Gleisreingrungswagen. Why use multiple words when one will do?😁
Sorry, couldn’t help it...
Otto K.

[C855B]

Ah, found a bug - Euro flanges. That sure as heck isn't going to run on Code 40 track, the Atlas/Tomix car bounces on spike heads as it is. This detail extracted from the locgeek.com review:



Very rough estimate for flange depth from the photo puts it in the 0.040-0.045" range, so I have doubts it will even work on C55. Note the nubs on the right axle - those are for the movement detector. Simply replacing wheelsets may or may not work for the other axles due to the power pickup, but this sensor axle would require re-profiling the wheels. If they're simply neodymium magnets glued to the axle then a replacement wheelset would be easy.

[peteski]

And they use phosphor-bronze wire wipers rubbing the wheel backs.    So old-school!  I guess that in the grand scheme of things, in this application the high-friction pickups are not all that bad.

[C855B]

Yeah, I noticed that, too. Agreed that the added friction wouldn't be much of an issue. It may even be to our advantage since it might work with replacement wheelsets. The Tomix car has small flanges on the axles with a wiper arrangement. Those make wheelset replacement a challenge. It can be done by re-bending the wipers to scrape the backside of the wheels, but you lose the advantage of the low-friction contact with the small internal flanges.