Cleaning Hornby track with an abrasive Peco rubber

With +Hornby Model Railways track pieces old and new we finally finished our model railway layout hooraah! We put our trusty freight locomotive to the test, only to find it stopping and jerking in several places along our track. Thinking caps on. The loco only stops on the second hand slightly grubby looking pieces of track and so the process of elimination begins. Our best friend Google suggested three possible solutions to clean up the track and raised several issues with each method:

a) solvent liquids - can damage plastic tracks

b) oil based cleaner - difficult to remove oil residues and can accumulate more dirt

c) abrasive rubber - scratches formed in the rails make future oxidisation more likely

We came to a conclusion that using rubber abrasive would solve our problem for second hand pieces of rail. To avoid scratching the metal too much or spreading the oxidisation we will use solvent based track cleaner for future track maintenance. 

Here is the result of how using a +PecoTrain  abrasive rubber helped clean up the track allowing the loco to move through the track.