The steps taken to upgrade an MTH NS Dash 8 dummy.

The Railking dummy was pretty much a "Plain Jane" but a great price [new].

So I added the stripes on the frame and a few extra decals which perked it up. Now I was about to attempt to paint the stripes when Tom [Spankybird] told me that automotive pin stripping was the answer. It is!!! Too easy to install and stays [does not chip].

I was not satisfied with that so I went for lighting. A buddy of mine who is a MTH tech was going to send me the pickups, insulators and wires. He had some health problems and it kept slipping. One day I called MTH and talked to a nice lady. We discussed what I needed [two pickups, to bottom plastic insulators, machine screws, nuts, top plastic insulators, black wires and red wires]. She told me she would check with techs and ship them. Well weeks went by. I was about to call her when I had a message on my answering machine that they were shipped and about $21. [the moral of this story is don't give up, they are just slow]. Picked up some 16V lights and mini switches at a hobby shop. Got some two pole connectors at Radio Shack [so I could disconnect the lights in the shell from the wiring in the frame]. Installed the pickups.


Next I wired the lights in the shell [front headlights, back lighs, interior light behind the engineer and ditch lights. [got stick on conduit from Radio Shack to help route the wires]. The bulbs are held in by black sticky W/S sealing "rope" [very sticky and will hold but removable]. Just pull off a little and it sticks anything clean to a clean surface.


Everything came together about the time the *** Teal article came out in CTT. Idea!!! Lets smoke this thing. Emailed *** Teal and he said Lionel smoke unit would work but the 18V for TMCC and DCS might burn it out. Emailed Bob Nelson [lionelsoni], a electrical engineer, on how to reduce the voltage. He explained how to build a bridge rectifier.
Next I started building the bridge rectifier. Got 4 watt 400V ones. Smaller ones would have worked. These were the best. Started with 5 [+ and - soldered together and the ~ from one soldered to the other making them in series]



I picked up a new Lionel smoke unit [was readily available at Miss Edna's]. Immediately took it apart. It was rotating backwards. Reversed the wires. Took out the wick and replaced it with fiberglass insulation. Took the sleeve off of the element.
Did some "bench" testing.

It smoked good with 5 rectifiers.

Used an "L" bracket form Ace Hardware to make amounting bracket to match the Lionel bracket on the unit. I did reverse the ends the Lionel bracket was originally mounted. Elongated the holes to make the bracket adjustable. Got some wide closed cell insulation [one side sticky] from Ace. This became the top gasket. Mounted the unit with another 2 pin connector for easy removal if necessay.


Wired all to two separate switches to give an off/ on postion for lights and smoke unit. These mounted in the holes in the frame made by MTH.

Put everything together and used wire ties to get wiring to go into shell easily.



On the track.

[fan in room blowing smoke to one side]

Found that with one, two or three engines running in TMCC, voltage drop was enough to change the number of rectifiers. Went to three in series. Not quite enough. Went to one. Mighty hot but plenty of smoke. Went to two. Works good.

Above it is in the middle of two NS SD80's lashed.

Here it is in the lead of a NS SD60.
I always have a powered unit behind to take advantage of the electrocouplers. It also looks good behind a string of hopper cars as a "pusher".
This is not that hard to do and does not take too long.