Today, the headlight on my MPC era great northern 4-8-4 went out, so I put it in neutral and tried figiting with the bulb, I noticed alot of smoke was comming out of the locomotives but ignored it and continued fixing the light, I looked up after a few seconds and really thick white smoke was pouring out of the stack. then, as I was going to shut the power off, the whole room was clouded with smoke and smelled like something was burning. something like rubber. Does anyone know what the problem is?
"No childhood should be without a train!"
last time I had that problem It was the smoke element but the final clue then was it shot flames straight up thru the stack ( thank goodness it was a diecast engine not plastic.) but without acually seeing the engine it could be a few things
Life's hard, even harder if your stupid John Wayne
http://rtssite.shutterfly.com/
Like rtr suggested it sounds like you burnt out the smoke unit. Some of the older smoke units will overheat without plenty of smoke fluid in them.
This may sound like a royal pain but always work on something without the power supplied to it!! With model trains any amount of extra voltage or watts can do some damage to certain kinds of electronics. The reason smoke units don't burn out as quick with the unit running is that the power is shared with the electric motor.
Lee F.
Smoke generators and motors are normally wired in parallel. At any particular track voltage, the smoke generator will draw a current that depends only on its own behavior and the voltage supplied, consume a power that is the product of that voltage and current, and will not be affected by whatever the motor is doing.
Bob Nelson
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