If you own a garden railway, you also have to clean the rails regularly. But what is the best way to go about cleaning the rails?
You should clean the rails of your train in the garden regularly. This work not only ensures that all garden trains can travel safely at all times. It also ensures the longevity of the tracks. The time intervals for this must be individually adapted to the system, but are necessary several times a year. Finally, the weeds must be regularly removed from the tracks. You can avoid this work by laying fleece, stone slabs or plastic foil under the rails.
Prefer high quality stainless steel rails
High quality stainless steel splints are generally far easier to maintain than brass splints. However, they are quite expensive to buy, which is why brass rails are installed much more often in gardens. Unfortunately, the latter form an oxide layer over time, which prevents the trains from making contact with the track and therefore always has to be painstakingly removed. The same applies to weeds on the tracks and other rail impairments such as leaves, snails, small stones, etc.
Garden railway - 3 tips for track cleaning
Tip 1 - Remove weeds from the rails
The cleaning of the garden railroad tracks can be done by hand, but this is quite tedious. You can make this work easier if you first spray the weeds with a biologically effective pumping device. After a certain exposure time, the weeds can be easily removed from the garden railroad.
Tip 2 - use garbage tongs
You have to pick up and remove small pieces of waste and other residues in the rails one by one. A garbage tong simplifies this work in that constant bending is far less necessary.
Tip 3 - Track Cleaning Locomotive
There are so-called rail cleaners for cleaning the rail surface. This is a special track cleaning locomotive that can be combined with a track cleaning car. This rail cleaner easily keeps the surface of the rails free of weather-related oxide layers without damaging the rail profiles.
This is how the rail cleaner works:
The rail cleaner is placed on the rails and put into operation just like a normal garden railway. Depending on the degree of contamination, the corresponding number of laps must then be driven with the track cleaning locomotive.