My Lionel locomotive will smoke when running alone, when I attach the whistle coal tender, it won’t smoke at all. I’ve wrapped electrical tape on the coupling so there was no metal to metal contact to no avail. I have removed the tape since. Does anyone have a solution?
[#welcome],
The problem seems to be in the tender, turn it over and open it up, usually four screws hold the shelll on. Look for any burnt wires or other signs of a short circuit. Also look at the underside of the wheel assembly or truck as Lionel has had some wheel assembly center rail rollers short out to the frame of the truck or wheel housing, circa 1990.
Normally an engine would smoke better with the tender hooked up as it would need more power to run.
Lee F.
I’m guessing you probably have a NYC 4-4-2 from the NYC Flyer set? If this is the case the tender has absolutely nothing to do with the smoke unit, so unless the whistle is drawing a lot of current so that the smoke unit doesn’t get enough to operate, I can’t help with this problem 
could be a short or something as stated above BTW I have the NYC 4-4-2 locomotive, my smoke unit hasn’t worked in 8 years at least, they were poorly designed with a heating element enclosed in an all plastic housing that melted and shorted the whole thing out, so be careful about that.
Well I took apart the tender and all of the wires looked to be in good shape. The trucks were riveted to the chassis so getting a good look at connections was hard to do. I disconnected the whistle and capped the wires and ran the train with the tender coverless and still no smoke. I started thinking at that point that I ran the engine solo and it smoked and there were no other cars on the track at that time. I’m going to start from scratch and see what happens when I add my rolling stock. Thank you for help Lee.
Eric
Eric,
Try using another tender, one without a whistle, with your engine and see what happens. I think that you have a short in the wheel assemblies on the tender in question. Like I mentioned before, Lionel has a problem with some of their wheel or truck assemblies shorting out. I had a caboose short out while using command control, reason is that command control puts almost full voltage to the track but limits your engine’s speed ability.
Lee F.
I will pick one up at my fathers and try it out. Thanks again.
Before you go running around for another tender, have you tried just the tender on the track to see if it shorts out?