My yard has four #6 double slips -- all bought at the same time through my LHS. When I was first laying track it was noticed that one of the switch rails had come loose from the metal sub-throwbar it was soldered to. Resoldered... end of story, I thought.

Then when chasing a persistant but intermittent short in the yard, I noticed that one of the switch-rails had come loose:

When I converted my DCC system from Digitrax to NCE in September, I decided to completely do away with the LocoNet system, which included my Logic Rail LocoNet fast clock.  I don't have any signals or anything else connected to LocoNet, so that was an easy decision.  My idea for the fast clock replacement was to use something else that wasn't dependent on or linked to my DCC system.  At first, I was planning to use the JMRI fast clock on my computer and eventually purchase the Iowa Scaled Engineering fast clocks.

OK my other model railroad is the live steam park, Train Mountain.  So we got a new toy to use for our LAYOUT MAINTENANCE.  Its called a Brush Blazer, what a beast!  A quickie test today, we cleared about an acre in less than an hour!  Russ

http://trainmtn.org/tmrr/index.shtml

The beast:

Before:

[Note: This thread deals mainly with conductivity issues relating to the internal electrical connections between the wheels and motor in my Kato Portrams (where access is extremely limited), and less-so with general track-cleaning methods].