Need an opinion from all you experts out there! My 2056 quit smoking. It has a the retrofit liquid resistor installed. I was pulling train with two lighted freight cars and several non lighted cars with an rw transformer. Does the RW put out too much voltage for the liquid smoke resistors? Should I stick to postwar smoke units instead of liquid retrofits?
Thanks much- Northernpike
Well for starters, it’s not the transformer, but the current requirements and draw of the locomotive. The open frame AC motor used on postwar locomotive has a higher current draw than that of a starter Lionel 4-4-2 steamer with a DC can motor.
I’m not sure what you mean by the retrofit… whether you mean a whole new liquid smoke unit? But you need a smoke unit that is equal to the current being drawn by the locomotive. Or a resistor wired into the smoke unit line, powerful enough to reduce the current enough to not damage the smoke generator. This is an area where maybe our resident electronics expert, lionelsoni could help out.
This is true of other makes of smoke generators. If you were to replace the Lionel unit with one made by Seuthe for example, a 5 volt version would burn out in no time, so you’d need one that operated at a higher current level to match the requirements of the locomotive motor. Or again, you’d need the proper resistor to protect the smoke generator.
But it’s not the transformer itself in this case, but the voltage requirements (amperage draw) of the locomotive motor versus that needed to operator the smoke unit not being similar. You just need a smoke unit (and resistor) to match the current demands of your locomotive.
You probably understand some of this already. Another thing is the smoke units themselves can be sensitive to the type of smoke fluid used in them. The Seuthe units used by K-Line and Williams are very sensitive and you really need to use the Seuthe brand fluid in them. Other brands will cause them to stop working.
You’re right in that the transformer doesn’t matter. But the relationship is between the voltage at the locomotive and the voltage that the smoke generator is designed for, not between the currents that they draw. Having neither the smoke generator’s specifications nor a knowledge of what voltage your train was operating at, I can’t say whether the smoke generator burned out from excessive voltage or for some other reason. So an exact replacement might work just fine–or not.
If we had some reason to suspect that too-high voltage did the generator in, the best fix I know is to put some number of rectifiers in series with the generator to reduce the voltage that it sees. The neatest way to do this is with bridge-rectifier modules, with the + and - soldered together and the ~ terminals placed in series with the smoke-generator load. You can use more than one if necessary and even half of one by using the + and - terminal connection as a center tap.
But that might not be the problem at all.
Have you opened up the actual smoke module and looked at it? There have been a lot of posts about the wicking-sleeve disintegrating. In some cases the heater-resistor may still be good, but the unit won’t smoke very well if at all.
That said, most everyone seems to speak of “the” smoke unit, when in fact there are several. I know very little about the liquid types, but in the early days of postwar, steam locos had one of at least two versions of the pellet-types installed at the factory. The larger, heavier engines had ones which was designed to run at 16 volts or so; whereas the smaller ones were designed for about 11 volts. (Don’t take these values as Gospel, they are just there for illustrative purposes.) It seems clear that it would be relatively easy to get an over-voltage out of a transformer such as lionelsoni’s Type Z, and many others if you had one of the lower-voltage types. If you “load up” one of the smaller locomotives with a string of cars, you may push the voltage above what the heater’s design limits. Maybe?
In one sentence, I think you have to match the replacement smoke unit to the loco. As a general rule, Lionel postwar devices tended to run at lower voltages than prewar; and modern devices at lower voltages still.
The problem is that I don’t know what the values should be, nor how to translate this idea from pellet type to fluid type, but I think when you switch from pellet to fluid, or even replace one pellet-type of unknown resistance with another pellet-type of unknown resistance, you have the makings of a problem. What is needed is a chart of the specs of the various types on the market, and I don’t have one. Anybody?
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The smoke unit is the original pellet type that was converted with the lionel conversion resistor, wick and packing. The wick is now black. When I put the new one in, should i dump the wick?
Thanks for all for all of the great ideas-
Northern
Some folks have certainly done that. Have you determined that the heater-element (resistor) still works? If it does (or if you replace it) you will still need some kind of wicking material, properly installed. There may be more info at the “Search Community” tab on the right side of this page.
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The heater element is inexpensive, just replace it. As for voltage they smoke better at a high voltage and are usually good at tolerating it. But like anything else time takes it’s toll.
Here is a link of possible interest, although it won’t solve the thread’s original question, and is quite dated.
Note in particular the comments re the 9-turn (Hi voltage) heater-type elements, vs. the 8-turn (Lo voltage) units.
At this point I don’t have similar information regarding the fluid-type units, except to say that I believe that in many modern locomotives the smoke units operate from a constant-voltage regulator circuit rather than directly from track voltage; and there are certainly differences between puffer and fan-driven units. I know that at least some MTH locos used two heating resistors of different values in an otherwise fairly simple circuit. Who knows what TMCC and “stuff like that” introduce into the question? Any “one size fits all” solution may well be suspect when one is dealing with half a dozen or so manufacturers and 60-plus years.
The conversion from a postwar pellet-type unit to a fluid-type unit sounds simple enough, but evidently the results are quite variable. Anyone want to try to sort it all out or know of a good article?
http://pictures.olsenstoy.com/cd/locoinfo/locsu1.pdf
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Northern, when I replaced mine I didn’t use the sock that came around the resistor. I cut it off and packed a small amount of regular pink house insulation in the bottom of the smoke unit so the resistor rests on top of it. The insulation soaks up the fluid and wicks it to the resistor giving you longer life on the resistor, more smoke, and it’s easy to replace when it chars and turns black. Just make sure you don’t block the air hole from the bottom of the unit when packing the insulation.
Paul