lionel smoke

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You're welcome! I know that you will find that book extremely useful repairing and running your Lionel PW trains. Again don't settle for anything less. Don't stop till you make it rock Oscar

[balidas]

Well, looks like I'm adding another book to my library!

 

Thanx for the explanation, I got the idea.

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If you own, plan to own or are even thinking about it you have to get this book. It explains everything about maintaining and fixing Lionel Postwar trains and accessories. It has diagrams, exploded diagrams with part numbers so the you can see what  you need to repair your treasures. It cost me around 22 bucks about 12 years ago and it has paid for itself hundreds of times. As I said a PW Lionel owner should have this book it is the bible. It's Greenberg's "Repair and Operating Manual for Lionel Trains 1945-1969" I have the Seventh Edition but I'm sure that they have improved it some since then and issued later Editions. It's produced by Kalmbach Publishing, the same company that puts out Classic Toy Train. If you go to your local hobby shop and they don't have one, find another hobby shop because this is a must if  you own PW trains and they should be aware of it. Don't get duped into getting another. This was written with the help of Lionel and by Roger Carp and some very knowledgeable people in the model train world. Mine is so beat up that I've had to use clear packing tape to keep it together. The whole book cover is covered with it. I couldn't have repaired my first e unit without it or took apart my first pull more motor and cleaned it and did it like a pro, all the time there it was in front of me all laid out in black and white in the book. Money well spent.

The wire that you are cutting is nicrome, or resistance wire. Something like you have in a plain old incandescent light bulb. If the wire is four inches long and a certain amount of voltage is present on one end of it and the other end of the wire is soldered to ground whatever that voltage is, has to be disipated or used up to ground. In doing that it produces heat and produces smoke in your smoke unit. If you cut off a piece, say an inch out of the four, you make it less resistive to the current going to ground and it heats up the wire more, causing more heat for the same voltage. It's a little more complicated than that but basically if you remove a part of the wire, it will heat up more because it has less area to dissipate the current going to ground. So the less wire the more heat for the given voltage. A lone wire small amount of heat like an electric blanket warm to the touch but not hot. Take an inch of that wire and connect it to the source voltage and ground and poof it will get instantaniously hot, white hot and evaporate. Something like that.

[balidas]

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If you have a Lionel postwar steamer there is a fix. Take the body off the frame to access the heater element. Unwind one turn of the resistance wire, re attach the free end to the terminal lug and re solder the wire to it. This should solve the problem, as best as it can be solved and it will never be like the fan driven MTH units. However I have many PW Lionel steamers that I have modified this way and they will drive you out of the room if you ave more than one running at the same time. My 736's are all smoke mavens. Give it a try. It is explained more in Repair and Operating Manual for Lionel Trains 1945-1969 pg. 185 if you have the book?

 

I have read this several times as I have postwar steamers and healthy puffs of smoke are always a highlight but I have some questions. I don't have that book...yet.

 What do you do with that extra resister wire you unwind? Do you cut it or bend it into a different configuration? If you cut it, how do you get more smoke with less wire?

 Thanx.

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Sorry but I didn't notice that you were running a TMCC in conventional. I can't speak from experience because I've never run my TMCC in conventional mode at least long enough to check or compare the smoke output. It kinda makes sense to me that in TMCC the smoke unit is capable of receiving 18 volts or thereabouts. In conventional not so much so hence less smoke output???

 

[bigdogjeff]

it smokes now that i put tmcc on my lines i think because the engine is tmcc it doesnt smoke as good in conventional

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As I mentioned in another thread regarding smoke, I have used the liquid in PW and Modern Lionel as well as Kline, MTH as well as Williams for years now with not problems. Check the other thread for a more detailed explanation. If your TMCC doesn't smoke enough there is a button for the smoke boost. If that doesn't clear the room then there is something amiss.

[wyomingscout]

bigdogjeff

i have a tmcc lionel steam engine

 

Are you talking about a Post War engine, or newer?

wyomingscout

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Reverse a smoke modification on a  Lionel Postwar? Those days are gone. A pristine, like new out of the box, 736 is still worth decent money. My question is why would you run it and make any mods on it in the first place In any case the mod is still the quickest, easiest, lest expensive, less time consuming and it works. Now if you plan to re do the mod at some later date then put in a repro smoke unit and live with it.

[lionelsoni]

Some folks prefer to make modifications that they can reverse and are willing to spend as much as $2 to be able to restore a locomotive to its original condition.  That's not usually a big concern of mine; but that's why they would "go through all that".  In any case, I trust that they will use their own judgment to select whichever of the suggested alternatives suits them.

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I don't know why anyone would want to go through all that, plus the expense of the bridge rectifiers, plus driving to Radio Shack or where ever to get them, when it takes 15 minutes to remove the shell and removing one wrap of resistance wire from the heater element.  It works and it works well, and if  you want more smoke then take two wraps.That would apply if  you were running a postwar switcher doing short runs and hauling one or two cars. When later if you switch to TMCC then you could go back to the resister in series with the smoke element. I have done dozens of my steamers, as I have said, and it works superbly. Stuffing an additional smoke unit lining helps also, but don't forget to put the smoke stack gasket in and make sure it's located properly or most of your smoke fluid will drip down away from the smoke innards where it does the most good. VBG Save those full bridge rectifiers for silencing the E unit. Now there's a fix if there ever was one.

[lionelsoni]

Another possible modification is to wire a voltage-dropping element into the locomotive in series with all but the smoke generator.  This effectively increases the smoke-generator voltage, since the transformer will be set to a higher voltage to compensate for that lost in the dropping element.  A bridge-rectifier module can be modified in a simple way to get a little more than a volt of drop; and multiple modules can be wired in series if necessary:  http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062580&filterName=Type&filterValue=Rectifiers

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If you have a Lionel postwar steamer there is a fix. Take the body off the frame to access the heater element. Unwind one turn of the resistance wire, re attach the free end to the terminal lug and re solder the wire to it. This should solve the problem, as best as it can be solved and it will never be like the fan driven MTH units. However I have many PW Lionel steamers that I have modified this way and they will drive you out of the room if you ave more than one running at the same time. My 736's are all smoke mavens. Give it a try. It is explained more in Repair and Operating Manual for Lionel Trains 1945-1969 pg. 185 if you have the book?

[sir james I]

your low smoker sounds like it has a smoke piston instead of a fan driven one. Im afraid what you discribe is quite normal. Some put extra packing in  the chamber to hold more fluid being careful to leave the airway open.

[bigdogjeff]

i have a tmcc lionel steam engine and run conventional. But i have to run at ful speed to see the steam at a good puff but at slow speed you can hardly tell its smoking is that normal i know mth is a smoke king and i have diesel lionel  that smokes good anyone know.