Cleaning American Flyer Rubber Roadbed

[Terry]

I have a lot of rubber roadbed, and decided For my American Flyer S gauge layout, I had set aside some dealer cartons of rubber roadbed, but I also had some nice flexible black roadbed that had brown paint on it.

Figuring that if I could use get the paint off the used roadbed, I could sell the dealer cartons, I tried cleaning them with oven cleaner. It worked very well.

Before I start - aluminum reacts to oven cleaner. Never use oven cleaner with anything made of aluminum.

Here's a video on removing paint from 1950s vintage American Flyer Rubber roadbed using oven cleaner and a brush.

I also did pictures of each step.

Here's the roadbed as I got it:

I found the Walmart oven cleaner worked much better than the dollar store grill cleaner. I had to respray and soak a few of the pieces I used dollar store spray on.

 

I put a trash bag into a plastic garbage can and then wearing a rubber glove I sprayed each peice with oven cleaner and put it into the bag.

Actually, after spraying two sections I stopped and set up a fan to blow away the fumes from the oven cleaner. Then I went back to spraying them and putting them into the bag:

 

 

I filled the bucket up, and then tied the bag shut. Tying the bag keeps the oven cleaner from evaporating too fast. It allows it to work longer.

After waiting overnight, I opened the bag and took out the sections. Each was scrubbed as needed with a brush. Here's some pictures of a section as I clean it:


From Bucket:
 

Uncleaned:
 

Half scrubbed:

The stiff green brush worked better than the softer yellow brush. I think the green brush came attached to a mop.

Final result:

 

After scrubbing each section I put it into a sink of water and rinsed it well. Then I put the roadbed into a plastic tub and poured off the water. I set the tub on the patio. It's 115 degrees outside today so it quickly dried.

Once they are dried, I looked at each section. Some had small specks that I picked off with a fingernail. A few sections didn't come clean so I repeated the process shown above on them.

This rubber roadbed will look great on my  American Flyer S gauge layout.

[T-man]

I like your solution! No pun intended.  You can surely handle a bulk cleaning job that way.

I find that Easy Off is a simple fast way to remove paint from metal and most plastics.
All I do is hold an inverted freezer bag around an item. Spray it outside. Then seal it up with a clothespin and let it set.
Some paints are ready in three hours but the old prewar paints sit overnight.
If one try is not enough a second is even better.

Technically the lye does not burn, it is a base and just dissolves the skin. Wearing protective gloves is always a good idea
Lowes now carries a larger size can of Easy Off, Just as good as the Walmart can but more.