Every model railroader needs a good scenery vacuum. Look at practically any dry scenery material and the instructions say something to the effect of “…after adhesive has dried, vacuum up the excess”, whether it be ground foam, track ballast, dead fall, etc. The ability to collect and reuse these materials is very important because it will cost you many times more in scenery material if you cannot collect and recycle said material. It is not practical to simply use, for instance, that decade-old shop vac in the corner of the garage that you use for every other household cleaning task (which cannot be dedicated for layout use), as opposed to a small vacuum dedicated specifically for scenery. So therefore, anybody building a layout needs a clean, compact, easy to use, functional vacuum cleaner for their scenery chores. Here’s the story of the one I use.
Last month, as I moved into the heavy scenery phase of layout construction, I finally got tired of using my small Hoover Twist N’ Vac handheld from the late 1990s. That vacuum had poor suction, a small trash bin, no hose, and worst of all, the exhaust air escaped directly to the left of the intake, meaning that whenever you tried to vacuum up loose material such as ground foam, you basically ended up with a small ground foam whirlwind that created a huge mess and gave you an eyeful. As a wearer of contact lenses, I can tell you that such is not my idea of a fun time. After a few choice words, I jumped in the car and drove to the local Ace Hardware, where I happened upon a Shop-Vac Micro on fire sale for 19 bucks. These small machines have a 1 HP motor, a 1 gallon collection bin, a 4.5 foot flexible hose, a wall mount bracket, a crevice tool, and a sweep tool. Not bad for less than a Jackson.
Upon arriving back at the house, I readied the new Shop-Vac Micro for layout scenery use by pulling off the top, removing the hose, then pulling out the filter bag. I cut one end of the filter bag off with scissors, then folded it over itself a couple times and then resealed it with a couple pieces of Scotch tape. This allows me to break the tape and empty the contents of the filter bag into a Tupperware bowl or whatever else I might use to contain my scenery materials. I then put the filter bag back in place, connected the hose, and then put the motor housing back in. If you get one of these, be sure to always use a filter bag…the motor has a simple foam intake filter protecting it, and I imagine said foam would not filter out ground foam or ballast very well by itself.
After a month of working on scenery, I can say that my new layout vacuum fits the bill extremely well.
BTW, the old Hoover Twist N’ Vac was promptly retired to the local landfill. :-)
