Cleaning a car.

I plan to make this thing an annual project, cleaning cars.  Each car on the STL will have to be cleaned and tested at least once a year plus service as needed.  The importance of cleaning is often underestimated.  Cars that are dirty, have misaligned wheels and broken couplers do not operate well, so it is important to keep cars free of dirt, wheels in good condition, and coupler mechanisms that operate reliably.  Here I will show you my method of cleaning a caboose:

 Step 1, assess the car.  This caboose had several things wrong with it that I didn't like:

1. Broken parts.  The plastic handrails, ladder, and under carriage all had broken pieces.  this is a very old piece of rolling stock (about 13 years old by now) and has been used and abused.
2. Dirt, the sides, inside, and under carriage all had loads of dirt and grime on them.  this needed to be cleaned off.
3. Wheels and couplers not lubricated.  The wheels are plastic, so I will probably replace them in the near future with metal wheels along with most of the "regular service" cars.  But that is another topic which I will save for later. The couplers also needed to be lubricated with some light oil.  Be sure to use oil that is plastic compatible and do not use too much of it.

 Step 2, pull the car apart.  the only parts I needed to separate was the roof and the ladder on the side.  As you can see by the photo this caboose has a lot of dirt in it on the inside as well as the outside.  Though dirt would have been okay on small lumber railroads, no one tolerates this much on the INSIDE of the car, where the crew sleeps.  Also, notice that the door on the left is slightly ajar, that is because a spring to hold the door shut is missing and will need to be replaced too.

Here is the handrail parts.  There were so many parts broken on this that I decided to replace all of the hand rails, with the exception of the ladder.  But that is for another day when I talk about REPAIRING A CAR.

 So here is the handrails removed.  the handrails that are left are the shiny brass ones long the sides of the car.

Step 4, clean the car.  With only water, the car got cleaned.  For RR cars this big I use the bath tub.  Be sure to clean off all the dirt that the cars leave in the tub otherwise your whole family will be giving you bad looks.  The water was warm water coming out of the shower head.  I used a paint brush too brush the little corners on the inside and polish the outside.  Now this car is good for the summer and will probably be cleaned i nthe fall.  A note for the under carriage, try to be careful when using the paintbrush there, some parts on the underside are fragile and don't tolerate harsh scrubbing.  But the results are pretty good, all that is left is to make new hand rails this weekend.