Last year I purchased a 2025 locomotive to rebuild a train set that has been been in my family but packed away since the early 50’s, and sent it to my daughter who lives in another state. Her, her husband, and my 6 year old granddaughter love it, and have made a family project of building a village around it. However, when I talked to her today she said that the smokestack had stopped smoking. Before I sent it to her, I purchased some liquid smoke stuff, and it was smoking nicely, although I don’t know if it was that liquid, or some remnant that was in the smokestack. When she put it together it was smoking. Anyone have any suggestions? What is a steam locomotive without steam???
IIRC that engine would have been built to use the Lionel smoke pellets, not a liquid, to create smoke. It could be that the coil inside the engine that heats up to make the pellet smoke has either quit working (due to a loose wire or something) or isn’t getting hot enough to create the smoke. If the smoke pellets don’t work, you might need to try taking it to a repair / restoration guy.
It’s possible that too much fluid was added to the stack. You could have your daughter try turning the engine upside down to empty the excess smoke fluid, then add only three or four drops back. If that doesn’t work, purchase some of the new smoke pellets for her to see if that will get it smoking again.
Robert
wj, the smoke pellets are just really cold smoke fluid. They are melted into liquid by the heating element in the smoke unit, so they were in fact designed to work well with liquid, and they do. Lionel may not have foreseen the widespread use of “fluid only”, but it works.
Rob