I can get a slight headache when the smoke unit is on, on my Lionel engines. Sure is fun to watch them puff. Are any of the other smoke fluids less irritating? Makes me wonder if the state of California has declared toy train smoke to be cancer causing? They think everything else causes cancer.
You just might be allergic to the oil itself. The “smoke” is nothing more than vaporized oil. Exceesive amounts could lead to lipid pneumonia but your walls and everything else in house would be covered by a thin film of oil before this happens. It is most likely that the headache is being caused by the aromatic additives to give the smoke it’s scent. You might want to try a different aroma and see if it does the same.
Never got a headache from the smoke. Have gotten a few from trains not smoking. [;)][(-D]
Jim
Yes. I have. I suffer from migraines and am quite sensitive to light and certain smells. The liquid smoke can give me a headache pretty quick. The smoke pellets do not cause this for me. By the way, it seems that there is a company now making the SP smoke pellets. I have seen at least one online store that sells them. Where do all of you buy yours?
Tim
MBL
Certain brands are worse than others. JT’s MEga Smoke seems to diapate faster. I installed a bathroom type exhaust fan in my ceiling and it pulls it out pretty good. Just a fan blowing some across the layout will help dispate the smoke.
I’d be much more concerned about symptoms like shortness of breath, chest pain, dizziness, nausea, etc. which could be indications of heart or lung reactions to the smoke cloud. There’s a large and growing body of information that fogs of particles or chemicals can precipitate serious heart or lung problems even at pretty low concentrations.
That said, if your only symptom is headache, and you insist on using smoke, Chuck’s advice is sound. Try an unscented or different scent smoke fluid, with good ventilation if possible.
Because the safety of clouds of vaporized neutral hydrocarbons like smoke from toy trains is basically unknown, I use minimal to no toy train smoke.
Even with the anti-radon stuff, our basement isn’t ventilated at all so we usually run with the smoke off - except for our older engines which are anemic-smokers anyway. I would like to try the Megasteam ‘flavored’ - is that the right word? No, ‘scented’ smoke fluids sometime.
And all these years I thought it was just me. I have several steamers and do not run smoke in any of them. Although I’ve tried only 2 “flavors” of fluid, I’ve never tried the pellets. My headaches from smoke from the fluids I’ve tried can get severe if I let even a small amount of smoke accumulate in the room. I’ve long since gotten used to not running with smoke.
I use J.T.'s Megasteam to increase smoke volume. But I have no sense of smell, so I can’t enjoy the scents incorporated into the fluid. Imagine a schnozz this big and it can’t smell a thing! [(-D]
Ha cha cha cha
Jimmy (not Durante)
[(-D][(-D]
The “worst” smelling stuff is some old 70’s K-Line smoke tables I found that I stored in '85. I think they could kill you.
I can’t say that I have gotten a headache from any smoke fluid, regardless of scent. I have gotten a headache from trying to run all 6 of my Marx 666 locos at the same time. The smoke build up set the smoke detector off. Makes for a nice smelling house though, especially if you use the Cedar smoke.
Everything in California causes cancer, especially the “cali attitude”.
It may be of a personal opinion, but I do prefer pretty much of the scented smokes to the basic lionel smoke.
If you think the smoke may be the cause of your headaches, see if ventilating better doesn’t help.
I am allergic to tobacco smoke (that is why my “sport” is train watching, don’t have to sit next to a smoker in a crowded area!), most perfumes (Amy Vanderbilt is okay but any of the newer scents are murder!) and room deodorizers (I HATE Glade “CandleScents” [tm], and those automatic scented-oil sprayers, etc.); they ALL produce extreme pain in my sinuses, headaches and mental disorientation.
I run an alcohol fired live steam loco outdoors and have to be careful what brand of alcohol I use! S-L-X brand (from Home Depot) is okay if I stay away from directly inhaling the fumes, but a slight accidental whiff of the stuff from True Value has put me on the ground!
From my viewpoint, if the artifical smoke from your trains gives you a headache, then DON’T USE it, it just is not worth the migraine headache and possible other effects you may not really be aware of.
Do you also feel “confused” or are you “slow” to react to someone’s presence/comments. Do you get easily angered after exposure to it? Are you tired or sleepy after playing with the trains?
Are these the things that makes your spouse comment about you “zoning out” when you play trains?
Do you notice that your spouse treats you differently after you play with trains? It could be YOUR perception and it could also be that your SPOUSE is being affected!
I took a look at the bottle of fluid that came with a late model Lionel steamer… The warning “caution, harmful or fatal if swollowed”…is printed on the bottle…
I have a bottle of MTH fluid that states: Should not be taken internally, although harmless if swollowed accidentaly"…
I have not compared these two smoke fluids side by side, so I cannot say which one smokes the best…
However, I have used this MTH fluid in Marx, K-Line, and both liquid and pill type Lionel locomotives…with good results…
A seven ounce bottle cost me 9.97 at CARR’S Hobby in Duluth, which I thought was very reasonable.
I am anouther one who absolutely cannot stand tobbacco smoke, but this smoke don’t seem to bother me… My conclusion is that the MTH fluid would be the safer fluid to be using, especially around smaller children.
I was under the impression that smoke fluid is just mineral oil, and therefore, relatively harmless.
Jim
The catch is “relatively”. If ingested in small qauntities and dependant on the purity of the oil. NOTE: toxicity was expressed for eating the stuff, not necessarily for inhaling large quantitites.
Cigarette smoke is actual smoke, aka a byproduct of combustion. The materials being burned are toxic and so is the particulate matter produced from that combustion. The output from a toy train smoke unit is a “fog” of vaporized oil or (in the case of some units) propylene glycol. You should never use glycol base fluid in a mineral oil based system or vice versa. These very different types of units. The smoke pellets are basically congealed oil that liquifies from the heat and then vaporizes to prouce the smoke effect.
The amount of smoke produced has to do with the temperature the unit operates at and the viscosity/vapor point that the oil changes state. That plus the aroma’s is the main difference in the brands.
I looked a little further and came up with a green bottle of MarX smoke fluid, which states: “non corrosive and non injurious”… Then I opened up a K-Line set and looked at their bottle: nothing,totally blank…The Lionel bottle states the contents as ‘petrolatum’…and advises to seek medical attention if swollowed.
Now I was getting curious, so I put a few drops of each fluid side by side on a white paper plate to see if I could note any visual difference or residue when they dried…
They all looked the same when dry, and felt the same also…So I took a lighter and held the flame to the four different samples on the paper plate…same results with all four samples, no flare-up.
No thanks, I don’t think that I will taste the four brands,But now I am really curious; Does Lionel fluid contain something the other fluids lack,Or, are they just covering their legal rears in case some kid drinks a bottle of smoke fluid?? If this is the case, why would MTH state that there is nothing to worry about???
I am not a chemist by a long shot; but I am a very curious train nut for sure…
The next step will be to take my four identical 0-4-0 Lionel steam switchers and couple them together of the same track…Then put a different smoke fluid in each one and turn them on…
The results should be interesting,but I would sure be curious as to a chemical and legal analysis of these questions that have been brought up…
“I was under the impression that smoke fluid is just mineral oil, and therefore, relatively harmless.”
As Chuck said, small amounts ingested are reasonably safe. Small amounts inhaled are not reasonably safe, in fact, can kill you. Small amounts in a fog inhaled probably aren’t too dangerous in tiny amounts, but we don’t know. I would never expose young children to toy train smoke for any period of time greater than a few minutes in a closed room, if that. The developing lungs of children are likely more sensitive to any unknown deleterious effects. We’ve spent decades, even centuries, trying to reduce air pollution of all sorts, why we’d want to revel in it for toy trains now is a little uncertain to me. One thing is for sure, there is no evolutionary adaptive mechanism in our lungs to deal with vaporized neutral hydrocarbons. Less is better, none is probably best when it comes to inhaling chemicals other than water, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. And the water concentration should be pretty modest ;).
Chuck, could you point out which units would use a propylene glycol fluid?? All the manufacturers say to use only their products; and don’t mention what their smoke fluid is made of…good way to sell their brand of smoke fluid, but it would be nice to know “the receipe”… In my 47 years of three rail, I have only destroyed one smoke unit…that was on a mid 80s 4-4-2 that was sitting on the track , in neutral , with a LW throttled wide open!!! When the circuit breaker clicked off, that smoke unit was absolute toast…Purely my fault on that one, I cannot blame the fluid…But other than that, I have used various brands of smoke fluid, including American Flyer and have had no problems with smoke unit performance. But it would be nice to know which units
When you think about it, in this day and age, when there are warning labels for just about everything, it’s amazing that toy model trains that smoke up a storm and are marketed to kids eight and up are even sold, especially since no really knows how safe they are.
Stop and think about a comparable product on the market right now. I can’t think of any.
Petrolatum means mineral oil, aka oil from rocks as opposed to oil from plants (vegetable oil) or oil from animals (like lard). Petrolatum (and it’s relatives parafin and petroleum jelly) are used in the manufacture of cosmetics and ointments and as laxatives. I don’t know if the inhalation of large amounts of toy train smoke fluid will cause the runs.