All of the smoking models I've seen make me think that there's an LPB in the smokebox, just havin' a smoke...not to pick on the poor beasts, but smoking model locomotives are in same league as giraffe cars, in my opinion - toy-town.
Wayne
snjroyI'm not a smoke expert, and I'm not an engineer, but I kinda remember reading that the type and quality of burning material affects what is coming out of the stack. And of course there is the level of effort involved (e.g., long coal drag going up a long hill), and the capacity of the engine.
I can give some pointers off-list to anyone interested in modeling prototypical exhaust, including some ideas how to control it proportional to load. Here is not the place for a theoretical discussion.
I'm not a smoke expert, and I'm not an engineer, but I kinda remember reading that the type and quality of burning material affects what is coming out of the stack. And of course there is the level of effort involved (e.g., long coal drag going up a long hill), and the capacity of the engine.
As a modeler, I don't use the smoke function for the same reasons mentioned above. However, one of the guys at the club made quite an impression during an open-door event with one of this smoking engines, including the modelers in the room. It was puffing in a really convincing way. It made a mess, but it was fun!
Simon
THAT is up to your wife!
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
cold steal Nothing more unprototypicle than a clean smokestack. Love the smokers!
Nothing more unprototypicle than a clean smokestack. Love the smokers!
Not always... per a popular DL&W RR promotion:
Says Phoebe Snow, about to go,
upon a trip to Buffalo,
"My gown stays white, from morn till night,
upon the Road of Anthracite."
Jim
The residue is one problem, and the smell is another. As a non-smoker myself, I don't care for it, and some others don't either.
I was at the big Springfield show one year, and MTH has a large booth with active smoking engines. This was, of course, a very large room, but the smoke smell was evident everywhere. Other vendors with nearby booths were not happy with their locations.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
cold stealNothing more unprototypical than a clean smokestack.
Of course if you're modeling slackadaisical operation with unwashed mine-run coal (or PRR T1s most of the time!) you'll have a legitimate desire for plenty of smoke ... and the need for a tavern-grade electrostatic precipitator to get rid of the exhaust once it has ceased prototypically puffing out and starts to hang heavy in the layout-room air...
Of course if you're only operating for a couple of minutes and need the room scented, those specialty aromatherapy smoke fluids are just the thing!
Remember all the smoke you might see in a running steam loco is more often than not all for show - a real fireman back in the day wouldn't get very far if they fired dirty like that all the time.
There are some large scale locos that have steam generators of sufficient volume that they will show steam at allt he right places, like the whistle, the safeties whent hey lift, and the cylinder cocks when starting off. They look pretty good, but unless they are using some new type of material, the residue could get bad, very quickly, with that volume.
Most of the locos in HO, like BLI, have a switch to turn off the smoke generator, so there's no need to really remove it to prevent damage if it's kept switched off. However, the space used up by the generator and the fan unit that makes it shuff COULD fit a decent sized speaker so that you could have at least SOME of the sound coming fromt he loco and not all from the tender. From a distance, you don't notice, but up close, you have a silent engine go past and then comes the chuffing tender.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
IMO, a valid concern. It's a lot easier to mute F8 than to clean up the residue left by those unrealistic smoke units. I would rather just imagine the bellowing smoke exhaust on my layout and leave it at that...
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
As usually practiced, smoke is a toy train feature, not particularly prototypical in a number of annoying respects; as you've noticed, many of these involve where the smoke goes after it no longer produces the stack effects. Furthermore the great majority of smoke generators will damage themselves if operated 'dry' even once for a comparatively short time. I have never had a use for it, even though I figured out how to make the puffs look prototypical coming out, as you can only run it long enough for a few photographs before the 'secondhand smoke' concerns start to become annoyingly evident. Photoshop is now thousands of times better!
If 'collector resale value' isn't a factor, remove the smoke generator and whatever goofy puffing arrangement is in there. (what might replace it is a cube or similar speaker and baffle if you do sound...)
Hi all,
many of my locomotives have smoke capability. I've never used this feature because I think the residue will fall over scenery and tracks leaving a dirt film.
is that a valid concern or am I worried about nothing?
Gary