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Now there is catenary on the layout it is difficult to clean the track, so I obtained a track cleaning wagon. This is an Aztec Manufacturing product made in the USA. It is fitted into an American boxcar shell, so I wanted to fit it into a suitable european wagon. I had a long wheelbase 4-wheel SBB sliding door van which is exactly the correct width body to fit over the Aztec mechanism. So this has been altered as shown below. The Aztec car as received. 
 The working parts. The rollers are slightly abrasive like a normal track cleaning rubber. These are set at a slight angle to the track so that as they roll along the have a slight scrubbing action on the railheads. 
 The rollers section has been removed from the Aztec car also the SBB wagon has been seperated into parts then the centre section of the underframe removed. 
 Testing that the rollers will fit ok, then the frame of the SBB wagon is screwed to the rollers section using some pieces of thick brass which I had handy and were exactly correct size! 
 Strips of thick styrene sheet were glued to the frame for rigidity. 
 The centre section of the inner frame needed to be cut to clear the rollers section, also the casting had to be filed to clear this (see pics above). 
 The converted wagon on the layout. I will weather the wagon to make the axlebox details stand out and also paint the ends of the rollers matt black so they are not so prominent. 
 I had used one these cars on an American N scale layout several years ago and it worked very well, so now I just have to run this wagon in freight trains to keep my tracks clean without effort. |