Can I clean my model railway rails with sandpaper?
Cleaning model railway tracks can be laborious at the best of times, so it's no surprise that modellers keep on finding new and inventive ways to clean their tracks to try and make the job quicker, more effective and stay cleaner for longer. But should sanding tracks be an option for cleaning them?
The answer to that question is no, definitely not, never in the month of Sundays and only if you hate your railway!
Although sanding your tracks will indeed produce the shiniest rails you have ever seen, the microscopic scratches resulting from the abrasive encounter will do little to aid electrical contact between your locomotive's wheels and the track.
Another problem is cleaning deep down inside your brand new scratches is pretty much impossible. That means the next time you come to clean your rails, you will have to sand twice as hard, and that will soon become even more laborious than the laborious method it was meant to replace.