9V track maintenance as opposed to 12v

The 9V rails tend to self clean, at first the train may be a little jerky, but after a while it should improve. My train club just runs a bare motor around the circuit for a few laps during setup. You may have to clean the rails if they've not been used for years. An eraser should help or metho would also work.

The European transformers are designed for 220V rather than our 240V, so you get about a 10% speed increase. You also get an increased risk of overheating and burning out your motor.

Those 220V ones might get a little warm too !
You can also try using Silvo polish on the metal rails......works great for polishing electrical contacts.

I gave up using 12V track a few years ago as you would have to spend a lot of time cleaning the track [ and the connectors under the motors ] before you could run your trains. As peterab said, 9v is self cleaning usually.

12V is superior to 9V in the range of accessories available; motorised points, flashing boom gates, etc.

I found that it was more efficient to convert the 12V trains to 9V and find [ borrow ] MOC solutions for points, crossings, etc. A search of the net will give details on these.

I find that 9V is also superior to PF on a large layout for ease of control.

One of the BrisBricks members at train shows loves putting basic 9V motors with a few attachments on the track. At the last show he had a cowboy riding a horse on one motor closely followed by an Indian galloping along with spear in hand.

The kids loved it and were cheering on their favourite.

Kaila wrote: EB told me that probably it's just the 12v track that needs cleaning Nobody ever told me this when I got it in the early 80's and I figured it should just work unless of course it's rusty..

Inside the back cover of the instruction books [ 7740 ], it shows a picture of track cleaning and says to 'clean regularly with metho'.

It should have said every 10 minutes.

brickie wrote:

Kaila wrote: EB told me that probably it's just the 12v track that needs cleaning Nobody ever told me this when I got it in the early 80's and I figured it should just work unless of course it's rusty..

Inside the back cover of the instruction books [ 7740 ], it shows a picture of track cleaning and says to 'clean regularly with metho'.

It should have said every 10 minutes.

Yep I'm starting to get that impression lol. Could this be the reason Lego dumped 12v in the first place? And if it was then wouldn't it have been more logical for them to create a new signal/accessory add on for the 9 volt range to emulate 12v?