I’m planning to run all alco, including electrics, and am woundering (good, bad, indeferent idea) does anyone think I shuld instal smoke generators in the diesals, and how so?[censored]
What scale?
If it is HO I would say no. The smoke wont be very impressive and it will leave an oily residue on everything. Also it will draw a lot of power. If you are in a larger scale it seems to be more practical and work better, but if you are in a smaller scale than HO you cant really fit a smoke unit in your locos.
This is a project I’ve been “designing” for quite a while. My first issue is that all the smoke generators I can find only do white smoke. Alcos really “need” black smoke. Given one can get over that, my idea was to mount a smoke generator in the shell so that it can constantly be generating smoke and keeping it enclosed until I wanted it. Then I was going to make a “fan” that when activated by an acceleration or working hard condition it would blow the smoke under pressure out the exhaust stack.
One problem with this is that the function outputs of DCC decoders are often not rated high enough for a smoke unit. That would mean the smoke unit would have to be on the motor output of the DCC decoder. So in my way of thinking this is a two decoder project. I thought about just putting the smoke unit directly to track power, but I was worried about generating too much smoke, especially if the unit was just sitting in the diesel house.
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Now here is a freeky post. The message picked up the following junk as part of the quote of this message. There is no way I can delete it. Very strange.
Whoa, it’s freaking out replying to this one too…
Anyway, why two decoders? Just drive a relay with a function output and use that to turn the smoke unit on and off.
–Randy
Companies on the net sell resistors fairly cheap and they put outs lots of black smoke when they are overloaded, there you go. No smoke generator makes black smoke. Fred
Smoke detectors only do white smoke?? Geez, if my house catches on fire, I hope it doesn’t create a lot of black smoke or the alarm will never go off !! [:D]
No matter what you try, no model smoke generator produces the cloud of thick, black smoke that an ALCO diesel engine did. As others have mentioned, too, smoke oil leaves a film on everything – track, scenery, locomotives, rolling stock, etc., and is best left to the real trains.
But I don’t want my smoke detector making any smoke at all !!
(p.s. re-read Texas Zephyr’s entry) [^]
Still love to, and most of the pictures of anything alco deisal (and a good many were idaling when they got there last shots in) had a good clowd following them. Can’t wait till the measeum boys fire up the 201! I’ll be there with a rcorder and a camra.[:)]
I would love to have smoking Alcos but, apart from the problems above… in H0 there’s almost nowhere to put a unit (especially with chips and sound taking space) and there’s a real problem of heat going where you don’t want it… like into melting the bodywork. N you don’t have a chance.
You might want to think about a magnetic reed switch to control the smoke unit, rather than a decoder. This is a mechanical switch that’s controlled with a small magnetic “wand” that you wave over the engine to throw the switch one way or the other.
You don’t need a smoke unit. Swap the stock motor for a Tyco one, and you’re all set. It’ll make its own “exhaust clouds” before very long 
Just so people don’t think wjstix is crazy, I’ve corrected the post he is talking about. When I originally typed it, in one place I typed “smoke detector” instead of “smoke generator”. [:)]