I have a Lionel Union Pacific 3887 bunk car with a smoke unit in it. It hardly smokes at all, I know it should not smoke like the steam engine that is pulling it but it virtually has no smoke coming out of the stack. I bought it new. I took the shell off of the car and it has a metallic cylinder with a small rod in the middle of the cylinder. I have read about how to improve the amount of smoke coming out of a steam engine by putting fiberglass insulation in the smoke bowl and was wondering if I could try putting some insulation in the cylinder to make the unit produce some smoke. Anyone have any ideas?
Does it get enough power? Is the locomotive smoking well but nothing from the bunk car? I think it should just be a stead little line of smoke coming out… I don’t know if insulation would help with this or not, sorry.
My engine is from the Union Pacific Fast Freight set. A Berkshire (jr?). The engine smokes well at full power but backs down on the smoke when I reduce the power. The bunk house barely whiffs smoke out at full power and not steadily. I can barely even see smoke. This is my only smoking bunkhouse and I have never seen another one in action so I do not know what to expect. I figured it would only leave a trail of smoke but I am not even seeing that. The cylinder is about an inch deep. Maybe I need to put more smoke fluid in it? I use Mega Steam smoke fluid and it works great in my engine. I thought the fiberglass insulation might hold fluid along the length of the heating rod to maybe make more contact with the rod to produce at least a little smoke to come out of the stack. I am going to give it a shot and see what happens.
Rolo,
The bunk car uses a Seuthe smoke unit, and most of them are rather weak in terms of output. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to increase output as far as I know. From experience, I learned to never put any type of wicking into these units. Try using a thinner fluid such as Mega Steam to get more smoke. Williams uses the same units in their steamers.
Thanks for the replies. I tried the fiberglass with no improvement so I took it out and turned the smoke unit off. The smoke unit felt warm to the touch, not hot by any means but it would not produce any more smoke than before. I like the bunk house anyway as it is lit up inside and out and has a nice red/ silver paint scheme.