Smoke Article/ CTT, It could have been better!

[Anonymous]

Big Jim,

Thanks for the ideas. It's always difficult to decide what to include because of book space concerns. I agree that pictures tell the story. I'll keep this in mind for future articles.

The book that's coming out this fall has 70 pictures to help tell the story but I'm sure more would have been better.

The other problem I see is how far should I go. The book is aimed at the simple to medium repair and if major work is required I suggest that the engine be taken to a service center. Kalmbach asked that I write it about simple repair but these new electronic wonders are never simple so I moved the mark a little farther. It's not a book to teach a repair tech how to fix trains but it will help them.

I'm also willing to answer questions if you are willing to E-Mail me. My address is ***@teals.org

Thanks again,

*** Teal

[ChiefEagles]

I guess I know more than I thought about smoke units as I used his article and went right on. Never opened a fan driven smoke unit before as they were not around when I left the hobby in the mid 80's. I found everything just as he explained it. Charred sleeve and charred wick. I hit the power on my CAB1 and saw the fan turning the right way [with the top off of the unit]. Mr. Teal gave the repairman's process to do the Lionel job [which his customers expect]. The only thing I could add came from experiences from a friend [Buckeye] who had experimented with some mods to the system. I had my units back smoking great following Mr. Teal's article, but then went with Buckeye's suggestions. Replaced the wicks with pink insultaion [gots bunches of it around the house] and removed the sleeves [that I had scraped the charr off of earlier]. Made sure the element was still heating and made sure it was pressing down on the insulation I had used for wick. Smokes even better. Servicing the smoke unit each time you service the engine was suggested by Mr. Teal. I will just add new insulation each time I service my engines. From what I hear at the repair/hobby shop in my area, the article has stired a lot of fixes for poor smoking Lionels. I even had a guy in Mass. tell me he found all 5 of his Lionel steamers with wrong rotating fans. More detail is great but it sure got things rolling. I now have a photo [from Marty E ] on how to check for wrong phased speakers which causes poor performance of the sound system. All because of Mr. Teal's article on smoke units. I hope CTT will publi***hat picture in some article or column soon. Just my [2c] worth.

[MartyE]

Jim

I don't think you're off the mark here. I do better by pictures as sometimes the text does not come across. I agree some more pictures certainly would have pushed the article better but I still say it was quite a find at least in my stable so far.

[BigJim]

*** Teal's article on improving Lionel smoke units seems to have met with rave reviews and justly so. However, I feel Mr. Teal's article could have and should have been much better. Heresy you say? Read on.

First we have a great find by Mr. Teal and a fairly easy explanation on how to perform the fix. What is lacking is the proper pictures!

Look closely at the pictures. I count three different smoke units. There is no diagram tracing the proper progression of the air through the unit. Since the blades are turning backwards, there is no explanation of why smoke doesn't get sucked in through the stack and into the engine shell???

There are also no photos related to "Fixing charred parts". This would have been very helpful by giving some idea of what exactly to expect when one does crack open the smoke unit. What is normal and what is not.

I hope Mr. Teal reads this as constructive criticism. Thanks for passing this information along.

I do feel that the editors of CTT could have done a much better job by including diagrams and pictures more relavent to the entire text of the article.