On my layout I’d like to feature a few working smokestacks in factories, manufacturing plants, etc. A lot of structures have smokestacks of some sort. I don’t want to do too much, because that would be overkill, but I’d like to feature maybe 2 or 3.
I’m just brainstorming some ideas for a system to do this. I’ve never been really impressed with the smoke generators on the market (the types that can fit into locomotives). Besides the annoyance of refilling them, the smoke doesn’t look very realistic to me. It looks like cigarette smoke. I want to create an effect that looks more like the white, billowey (is that a word?!), cottoney type of smoke that you sometimes see coming from large smokestacks.
Also, I don’t want a lot of it. Just a small amount rising 3"-4" above the smokestack and then disappearing. I certainly don’t want turn the room into something that feels like a nightclub!
I’d like to have a single machine that could run several smokestacks. I was thinking perhaps of a fog machine (the kind DJ’s use) with the fog being directed via hose to several locations. Just an idea. Not sure if you can do this with a fog machine or if it would look real. Has anyone ever tried this or have any other ideas?
The problem is that DJ-style fog machines will fill a room with smoke very quickly, the smoke isn’t particularly good for you, and it will disperse pretty quickly throughout the entire room. You might rig up some sort of manifold to stick on the end of a fog machine out of PVC, to neck it down into several small tubes–it might look good for a few seconds but then the room will fill with smoke.
In my experience the cheap ones you can get at party-supply stores are pretty noxious, the smoke smells like baby powder and breathing gets bad very quickly. The more expensive ones produce a better-quality, less irritating smoke but it’s still a health hazard and continued use will make your room simulate San Francisco or London fog more accurately than smokestack smoke within a minute.
I’ve used fog machines a lot (as a musician and DJ) and they have their applications but I don’t think that they would work too well in a model railroading application–unless one was modeling fog.
I have seen this done once. The idea is to generate the smoke in a chamber then distribute it via fan, pipes and tubes to the locations you want. A large fog machine would only need to run for a short time to make enough smoke to last a while in the chamber.
I’d personally stay far away from any smoke generators. Not only are the fumes bad for you, but they leave a residue on everything they settle on, which will make all your models dirty, including the track.
If you want the occasional smoke effect, I’d work up some sort of homemade system using a metal tub, dry ice, a fan, and tubing to carry the dry ice steam up to any chimneys. The dry ice will be better for you and the models, and you’ll have the satisfaction of telling people you created the effects completely on your own!
Before chemical smoke and DJ fog machines, TV shows used dry ice, which is CO2. A sheet of dry ice lets off smoke when exposed to air. A small ice chest containing a block of dry ice would last for several days. A small boxer fan, 1" diameter, the type used in computers, could be used to move the smoke through tubing to the various locations where you want to have it appear. When we wanted to simulate an IRS building on fire on the Cochise & Western Model Railroad Club’s HO-scale layout, I bought a smoke generator that uses the same type liquid that is used in locomotives, except that it has a large reservoir with a fan and a 1/2 inch round plastic chimney. In order to conserve fluid, I have a small spring loaded toggle switch on the facia that must be held on to generate smoke. The unit takes too long to begin generating smoke, since it is, I believe, done with a heating element. And, as someone else has pointed out, the smoke fluid leaves an oily film on everything. Dry ice smoke is actually steam that condenses when air comes into contact with dry ice, and just a little of it is the CO2 evaporating, so it leaves no residue. CO2 will not produce as much smoke in the dry Arizona climate as it does in more humid locations. You must be extremely careful when handling dry ice. Never touch it unless you’re wearing heavy insulated gloves, because it will instantly freeze your skin to a degree akin to frostbite.
The only problem with dry ice is that, since it’s heavier than air, it will sink–which is the opposite of what you want it to do if you’re simulating rising chimney smoke.
You could always rig up a tube to the stacks and, at appropriate intervals, take a drag from a cigarette and blow it out the stacks! An Australian kiddie show from the 50’s apparently simulated the smoke from a steamship’s boilers in this fashion.
If you use dry ice, keep a window open for ventilation. While CO2 isn’t poisonous per se, a build up of it can screw up your breathing. Also, it will freeze whatever it contacts so think about that affect on your models and layout.
Enjoy
Paul
Whatever you do to create model-smoke it never looks prototypical, like the thick white/grey/black clouds you see in the old steam-pics, Or did I miss some new inventions??
Try bruning a trash can full of trash and wet diapers just like your neighbors always seem to be doing during your cookouts. It produces lots of white noxious smoke just like them smokstacks did back in the good old days before pollution controls and health were a concern. Just put it under your layout and it will look just LA or Chicago in them wonderful days you want to model. Open your windows and hear the neighbors complain just like the Canadians do about all the smoke and smog and how you are ruining the enviroment. Then set off a few nukes on the upwind side of your layout so all your LPBs can get a little dose just like the government did to us in the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. Don’t forget to model the landfill and substandard sewage plant while your at it. Do a strip mine and steelmill too. Leave lots of poisionious tailing from your lead mine laying around along with arsenic from your gold mine. Don’t forget to cut down all the trees and model some really nice mudslides and homeless bears eating tourists. Then we need PCB and dioxine around the chemical plants along with the cemetary full of 30 year old men. Oh, I yearn for them good-old days. Did you know the English almost dissolved London with sulfer dioxide acid rain in the late 19th and early 20th century? FRED
Seriously, all the people who currently model trashville USA with run down buildings, trash everywhere, junkyards, steelmills, people living in shacks, you know, the current popular in the magazine layout, should read my post with a hint of sarcasm from me. Is that they way you see the world? A dark, dirty, rundown mess? I thought I was kidding, but now on reflection I may be closer to the mark than I thought. FRED
Having creating some special effects for television and motion pictures, I tried to think of solutions and most of the “practical” (done more or less for real, in front of the camera) solutions don’t scale down very realistically. When done in minature for the camera on a one-time basis, the camera usually has to be “overcranked”-- that is take the picture at high speed so that when projected at normal speed, the smoke or water or gravity effect is slowed down and moves ponderously and massively.
So what can look right to the eye on the model scene. I thought about computer simulation for the camera, double exposure, and then it hit me. Put your smokestack industry right against the background and use some kind of projection of a smoke effect. A continuous loop in an movie projector (probably clunky and noisy, even though you can probably get an old projector at a garage sale), or some kind of effect like a moving/rotating filter in front of a light projected through a lens.
I have seen some interesting effects creating LIGHTNING threatening clouds on a model railroad scene in this manner. Smoke?..no. But somebody might be able to make it work.
Kenneth L. Anthony, Santa Vaca and Santa Fe Rwy, Corpus Christi, TX.