Scalefour Forum

Tim V wrote:All this correspondence - must be an article in there somewhere ...

I will be willing to report to Snooze on my trials mentioned above, when completed, so several months away.

grovenor-2685 wrote:

Alan Turner wrote:I find these to be ideal as they are square and therefore rub along the top of the rail better.

Available from any decent art shop.

https://www.derwentart.com/en-gb/c/prof ... l-graphite

or these: https://www.cassart.co.uk/drawing/paste ... gIpnfD_BwE

regards

Alan

There is a big difference between graphite and charcoal! I would not use the latter on my track.
I have successfully used the carpenters' pencils, from Dad's workshop.
Rgds

Yes indeed! I have always used 6B unaware that softer grades existed, but presumably the higher the graphite content the better the conductivity.

Steve

One of the more unexpected discoveries from exhibiting regularly in France has been that French modellers use wine to clean their tracks - and very successfully too.

The procedure is to firstly select a wine which isn't in a screw-capped bottle, secondly drink the wine, sharing it with your fellow modellers, and thirdly use the cork, whole, to clean the tracks. Any dirt disappears into the natural fissures in the cork and, being fairly soft, it doesn't abrade the rail at all. In time, the cork will need replacement but by then everyone will be thirsty again!

You can use plastic corks but the natural (or compressed) ones are best.

bécasse wrote:One of the more unexpected discoveries from exhibiting regularly in France has been that French modellers use wine to clean their tracks - and very successfully too.

The procedure is to firstly select a wine which isn't in a screw-capped bottle, secondly drink the wine, sharing it with your fellow modellers, and thirdly use the cork, whole, to clean the tracks. Any dirt disappears into the natural fissures in the cork and, being fairly soft, it doesn't abrade the rail at all. In time, the cork will need replacement but by then everyone will be thirsty again!

You can use plastic corks but the natural (or compressed) ones are best.

Brilliant! I have immediately fished out of the waste paper basket the discarded cork from a bottle of Beajolais-Quincie that my wife and I shared earlier this week. Only yesterday I cleaned all the track on my layout with a Peco track rubber, and then vacuumed off the dust, but I will certainly give the cork a go.

(The Beaujolais was very pleasant too. Quincie (there should be an acute accent over the 'e', but my keyboard can't do accents) is one of 39 named Beajolais Villages (just one step below the 10 Beaujolais crus), and this wine came from the well-known negociant house of Louis Jadot.)

(there should be an acute accent over the 'e', but my keyboard can't do accents)

Martin, it's not your keyboard, it is which keys and what order you press them...

Press "Alt" and hold, press "e", let go of the Alt key, and press "e" again. - é

MarkS wrote:

(there should be an acute accent over the 'e', but my keyboard can't do accents)

Martin, it's not your keyboard, it is which keys and what order you press them...

Press "Alt" and hold, press "e", let go of the Alt key, and press "e" again. - é

Doesn't work for me I'm afraid.

On my keyboard there is a key marked "Alt" to the left of the spacebar, and there is also a key marked "Alt Gr" to the right of the spacebar.

If I press & hold the key marked "Alt Gr", then press the "e" key I get é

Bu#@&* the accent. What I need to hear is whether a Louis Jadot cork makes the track cleaner than a cork from Lidl’s plonk! I

To get é press Num Lock on the numeric keypad, press and hold down the Alt key, type the code 130 using the keys on the numeric keypad, release the Alt key. Voila! Don't forget to cancel Num Lock when you have finished.

There are codes for lots of useful characters such as ½ and ± : https://tools.oratory.com/altcodes.html

Bill

Bill Newstead wrote:To get é press Num Lock on the numeric keypad

Unless, of course, you use the numeric keypad for numbers usually, in which case you should ignore both this instruction and the reminder to cancel it at the end.

Thanks for the link, though, Bill.

Paul Townsend wrote:Bu#@&* the accent. What I need to hear is whether a Louis Jadot cork makes the track cleaner than a cork from Lidl’s plonk! I

I can assure you that as long as the cork is cork it works just fine, domestic or imported makes no difference

Cheers,

David

On the subject of accented French vowels (Does this come under the heading of getting it all right ????), I was typing on an iPad. On my PC (using MS Word), there is the option of inserting symbols, including all the usual accents.

Using the Louis Jadot cork (which in this case is a composite cork) I could not detect any noticeable effect, but I had already cleaned the track the previous day with a Peco track rubber, so this was not exactly a fair test.

On the iPad or any other IO S device just hold down a key and a list of available accented versions of that letter will come up. It even has ^w and ^y for our Welsh friends.

Paul, did you ever conclude your experiments?

DT

It happens that I mention this in my article “Updating Highbridge” in the May Snoozef .

My interim conclusion is that there is no advantage in using the expensive and inconvenient aerosol WD40 Contact Cleaner.

Comparison between Propanol aka IPA and Heptane is ongoing. The results are pretty much the same in my operational trials and so far there is nothing to choose between them in performance for track cleaning.bgb

In recent weeks Propanol has been in short supply as it is the active ingredient in hand sanitizer.

Thus I recommend using Heptane. It is available on EBay etc from the same suppliers as Propanol at similar prices.

I continue to keep a log of track dirt incidents and need for cleaning and will report again if any clear advantage appears for either solvent.

I have noticed that Heptane appears to be more volatile so more is used in service. I have started logging consumption.

My reading of the COSHH data is that toxicity is similar.

Paul Townsend wrote:It happens that I mention this in my article “Updating Highbridge” in the May Snoozef .

My interim conclusion is that there is no advantage in using the expensive and inconvenient aerosol WD40 Contact Cleaner.

Comparison between Propanol aka IPA and Heptane is ongoing. The results are pretty much the same in my operational trials and so far there is nothing to choose between them in performance for track cleaning.bgb


My reading of the COSHH data is that toxicity is similar.

Propanol is not IPA. Propanol is propan-1-ol whereas IPA is propan-2-ol

regards

Alan

Alan Turner wrote:

Paul Townsend wrote:It happens that I mention this in my article “Updating Highbridge” in the May Snoozef .

Propanol is not IPA. Propanol is propan-1-ol whereas IPA is propan-2-ol

regards

Alan

True, my mistake. All my remarks refer to IPA, I should not have mentioned propanol.

Commercial Heptane, which I am trialling is usually sold as a mixture of the many isomers that exist. I have no idea which of the 9 isomers is most effective for our application. Even if I knew, I suspect that trying to buy a lab. grade of any one isomer would be prohibitively expensive.

In the case of IPA I wonder if some vendors' versions also include the other isomer ?

Paul Townsend wrote:

Alan Turner wrote:

Paul Townsend wrote:It happens that I mention this in my article “Updating Highbridge” in the May Snoozef .

Propanol is not IPA. Propanol is propan-1-ol whereas IPA is propan-2-ol

regards

Alan

True, my mistake. All my remarks refer to IPA, I should not have mentioned propanol.

Commercial Heptane, which I am trialling is usually sold as a mixture of the many isomers that exist. I have no idea which of the 9 isomers is most effective for our application. Even if I knew, I suspect that trying to buy a lab. grade of any one isomer would be prohibitively expensive.

In the case of IPA I wonder if some vendors' versions also include the other isomer ?

I have just had a narcissitic lunch.
Re-read my article in just published Snooze "Updating Highbridge" to see what I had committed to back in March.
In the PS "re track cleaning" I refer to Hexane as being the actrive ingredient in WD40 Contact cleaner and thew solvent that I bought to compare to IPA.

Shock Horror!!

For Hexane in my article read Heptane.

I got it right in my initial contributions at the top of this thread.
I nearly did a Chemistry degree way back but went for Electronic Engineering instead because it is less dependent on a reliable memory that I don't have. I always say you don't need a good memory if you know where to look it up.

I must have been too lazy or stressed by my Italian grandchildrens' exposure to Covid-19 when I wrote the article referred to since I clearly did not check.

Having at last done the bottles check I should have done before, I can help explain why I said above that IPA = Propanol. The supplier's bottle says IPA aka iso-propanol. I agree there is an isomers difference as Alan corrected above. Organic solvents are a bit of a minefield for the careless. I am glad I did electronics!

Paul Townsend wrote:

Alan Turner wrote:

Paul Townsend wrote:It happens that I mention this in my article “Updating Highbridge” in the May Snoozef .

Propanol is not IPA. Propanol is propan-1-ol whereas IPA is propan-2-ol

regards

Alan

True, my mistake. All my remarks refer to IPA, I should not have mentioned propanol.

Commercial Heptane, which I am trialling is usually sold as a mixture of the many isomers that exist. I have no idea which of the 9 isomers is most effective for our application. Even if I knew, I suspect that trying to buy a lab. grade of any one isomer would be prohibitively expensive.

In the case of IPA I wonder if some vendors' versions also include the other isomer ?

Further to this, my bottle check identifies the Heptane that I am using as 99% n-Heptane if anyone cares!