adding smoke to Spectrum 4-4-0

[MAGER]

Is is possible to add a smoke unit to the Spectrum (Modern Balwin) 4-4-0? If so, what smoke unit would it be?

[ACY]

There are a myriad of smoke units you could use, but they are not realistic, require a little extra maintenance to keep things clean because it often leaves a film on everything, and they often are not reliable in HO scale. If you are set on smoke no one is going to stop you, but that is just my opinion.

[Doneldon]

MAGER-

Allow me to second ACY's comments about smoke. It's a pain in the patoo for an effect which is suggestive of locomotive smoke at best. It might be worthwhile for kids or grandkids but I won't putz with it.
                                                                                                                             -- D

[GN.2-6-8-0]

Bought the BLI Paragon 2 Y6B with the fan generated smoke unit, checked it , yep' it worked............turned it off!   

[Jim Banner]

I seem to remember some pretty good looking smoke coming from American Flyer locomotives in about 1950.  Much of the locomotive was taken up by a bellows operated by an axle cam.  The smoke came out in white puffs synchronized to the motion.  The motor was in the tender, which left no room for a whistle.  I do not remember if they smoked at low speed.  In fact, I cannot remember trains of that ilk and era ever being run at slow speed.  Stop and dizzyingly fast were the two options.

I believe Gilbert used smoke pellets much like Lionel.  No oily residue, just a fine powdering of ammonium chloride which in a damp basement corroded everything in sight.  Ammonium chloride is a bit like dry ice in that it sublimates when heated, going directly from a solid to a gas.  The gas immediately condenses back into a solid but in the form of tiny crystals that look a great deal like steam or white smoke.

Jim

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

I don't understand smoke units in models.  You cannot scale down the physics of smoke to look like anything but a cigarette inside the model.  To me, a smoke unit is just something else than needs maintenance and can break.

My dad used to say much the same thing about a lot of fancy gizmos on automobiles.

[GN.2-6-8-0]

I don't understand smoke units in models.  You cannot scale down the physics of smoke to look like anything but a cigarette inside the model.  To me, a smoke unit is just something else than needs maintenance and can break.

My dad used to say much the same thing about a lot of fancy gizmos on automobiles.

And he was probably right!

[CNE Runner]

As an ex-Lionel collector I definitely agree with the previous posters regarding smoke units: they don't look realistic, the air will quickly become an OSHA disaster zone if multiple locomotives are run for any length of time, and the oily deposit really 'gums' up trackwork.

Jim - I had several pre-war and immediate post-war locomotives in my collection that were designed for the smoke pellets (the only one I kept is a #224E). Thankfully those awful smoke pellets were legislated out of existence (ammonium chloride does interesting things, in the lungs, as it mixes with water).

Sound? Absolutely! Smoke? I'll pass.
Ray

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

I don't understand smoke units in models.  You cannot scale down the physics of smoke to look like anything but a cigarette inside the model.  To me, a smoke unit is just something else than needs maintenance and can break.

My dad used to say much the same thing about a lot of fancy gizmos on automobiles.

And he was probably right!

You bet! 

[ryeguyisme]

i used to smoke cigarettes(yes even great minds dive into the evil realm of disgusting habits) and I will definitely say this, smoking ciggs made me cough up some stuf once in a while, anything I've experienced before and after ciggs that was bad was model train smoke, and I must say its ton load worse for your lungs. Wanna give yourself instant bronchitis? Just turn on a few lionel locomotives with smoke units and when the room becomes thick with it, I'm sure you'll get a little sick or at least wake up the next day coughing something nasty


let that be a lesson oh and another thing.... don't smoke, its a gross and smelly habit, not worth it

[train guy]

Micro Mark has a standardized smoke unit for any thing only Its not cheap but very realistic. And Bachmann has a standardized smoke unit but its cheap and delicate so I would go with micro mark.

[Tom M.]

Yes, but it takes a lot of effort.  I've done it twice now for one of my DCC services customers.  It takes about 5 hours work to do it.

A Seuthe #22 smoke unit can be made to fit.  The #22 is a relatively small unit with an isulated jacket designed for use in locos with a plastic shell.  While most of the modern American shell is metal, the smoke box area is plastic.

First, you need to remove the loco cab and then the boiler from the chassis.  Next, you must remove the smoke stack.  There is a small philips screw at the bottom of the stack and to remove it simply slip a small jewels screwdriver down the stack.

Once the stack is removed, you use the screw hole as a centering hole to drill a 3/16 hole to make room for the smoke unit's stack.  I do this by holding the drill bit in by fingers and gently twisting it.  You must go slow and careful because you want to preserve the stack flange casting on the shell.

Now the fun really begins.  You now need to mill down the metal frame above the cylinder cradle by just under ¼".  You do this from the front of the casting back for ½".  You need to remove this metal to provide clearance for the smoke unit to fit within the boiler casting.  But, before you can do the milling, however, you must remove the motor mount portion of the casting from the drive wheel assembly.  To do this, de-solder the motor power leads from the motor and you remove two screws from the bottom of the wheel assembly.  You can then mount the motor assembly in a milling machine x/y table and mill out the material.  After you mill out the material, you then use a drill press to drill a 5/16" cup centered above the cylinder cradle.  You then take a #50 drill bit and drill a hole at a 45 degree angle towards the rear of the loco.  The 5/16 hole provides a cup to hold the bottom of the smoke unit and the #50 hole provides an opening to pass the smoke unit wires out.

To provide power to the smoke unit, I run a pair of wires under the locos running boards back to the cab area.  Since the units I've done are controlled by DCC.  These wires are connected to the tender with a two pin plug.  The smoke unit itself draws over 125 mA of power.  This is generally too much for a decoder function to sustain.  As such, you need to wire in a micro switch.  In doing so, you use the decoder function to control the on/off of the micro switch.  Track power is then provided by the switch to power the actual smoke unit.  You want the ability to turn the smoke unit on/off, because it will quickly self destruct if it runs out of smoke fluid and you don't turn it off.

Lastly, I make a replacement smoke stack using a spent 22 caliber long shell casing.  To do this, you must drill out the bottom of the shell.  Make sure that it is a spent/fired shell.  There is a primer charge in the shell, so simply removing the bullet and powder will not work.

Good luck,

Tom

[Doneldon]

Tom-

I can attest to the importance of making sure there is no primer remaining in the .22 shell.

The last time I was sent to the boiler room in school so my teacher, the principal and the custodian could all take turns beating me involved an empty but primed .22LR shell. Ours was a small school, only three rooms, so fifth and sixth grade met together. Well, I was scraping the primer out of the .22 while my teacher was busy with the sixth graders. I was preparing to make a bomb using the powder and primer from a box of cartridges, like any red-blooded American 11-year-old would do under like circumstances. I had all of the powder out (get this: using my teeth to clamp on the bullet while I pulled the brass off with my fingers) and was working on the fulminate of mercury which I planned to use as both a primer to ignite my bomb and as an enhancer for the gunpowder's explosion. I only needed a little bit as primer but I wanted as much as possible so I could lace my gunpowder with it and achieve a more powerful blast. Being kind of a stupid kid, I was using a bobby pin to scrape the primer rather than something less likely to ignite it, like a stick. So the primer went off right in the middle of the sixth graders' spelling test and sent the brass pinging around the room. I instantly focused my attention on the open book on my desk but I guess my face gave me away and off to the boiler room we went.

I rank the beating I got as the second worst in my academic career, just ahead of the one for swatting my first and second grade teacher on the fanny for having the same birthday as me, but far less severe than what I got for punching the classmate with hemophilia and delicate nasal membranes in the nose.

As painful as it was to be serially brutalized by three adults, none of those correctional ministrations approached my worst school humiliation. That was the time the principal walked into the girls' bathroom which I was touring at the request of a female schoolmate whom I had just squired through the boys' bathroom. You know how it goes ... 'I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours' ... Yes, nothing before or since was worse than wearing a dress to fifth grade for a week. But that's a story for another time and I'm already way too far off the track (ugh, sorry) from model trains. What's this thread about again?
                                                                                                                                                            -- D

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

Holy cow! I'm glad I didn't go to school where you did! 

[mabloodhound]

Memories.   Got me to smiling.   You need to write a book