I’m new to this so please forgive if this has been covered before.
I’m running modern Lionel trains and I like to see the smoke drifting across my railroad, however my lovely wife [:X] finds the standard Lionel smoke fluid makes her feel unwell [V]
Question: Is it OK to use other smoke fluid e.g. MTH or Supersmoke in modern Lionel engines? Do the really smell any better?
Many thanks for any help
Wizard.Toys
there are different scents available, but they are all composed of the same stuff. i suspect she is reacting to the material, not the scent. i find myself slipping into respiratory distress when the trains are smoking, so i have all my smoke units off.
there are now several places to get scented smoke fluid.
I use and like this one.
I know that MTH has come out with a large line of scent fluid, but I have not tried them.
Thanks Spankybird that’s a great link, lots to choose from, much appreciated.
Thank you Spankybird!
All the best from Mrs. Wizard xxx[:)]
BTW my wife like the bayberry
My GF likes Vanilla, and crowds at shows seem to like Cinimon roll
I would suggest not using Supersmoke. It smells good, but gums up your smoke units worse than anything. I would suggest using nothing other than Lionel, MTH, or JT’s MegaSteam in your O gauge engines.
Tom, some of the guys in the my local O club use the MTH scented fluids. The Christmas smells like fabric softener, the coal smells like burning rubber. Next meeting im going to show them my bottle of megasteam!!!
I agree with Spankybird. I bought some of “Megasteam’s-coalfired steamer” before Christmas. It’s awsome! It works well with my HO Marklin steamers too! I’ve had no problems so far. The volume of smoke seems greater and the smell takes me back to the 1950’s.
Thanks for all the comments, this has been really useful. The comment about Supersmoke is interesting and the kind of thing I wan’t to avoid. Sounds like the megasteam has won approval [^], I look forward to trying some.
Clive [:D]
JT’s is the best. My wife loves christmas pine or vanella.
It also smokes the best of all of them. I find lionel and MTH both stink and do not smell like they say, especially if you are using a MTH engine.
Dave.
One of the best Smoke Fluids that I have found is Williams. It is also the most economical (the standard bottle is about double the size of the Lionel, K-Line and the like. In a couple of my MPC era steamers (8206, 8142) this stuff has them smoking as if they were MTH steamers.
Ken
If anybody makes a better smoke fluid than JT’s, then I wouldn’t be able to see across the layout!
Jon [8D]
I hear theirs some pretty good smoke fluid coming out of Jamaica I think they call it black tar or something like that.
One thing I found out with my new atlas rs1 in c@nw, is the jttrains smoke fluid is removing the green paint from the inside of the smoke pipe. You need to be carefull of getting it on your loco.
When they say that the smoke fluid is UNSCENTED it doesn’t mean it’s SCENTLESS. I fell for that one when buying the MTH smoke. It’s a mistake I easily made. I thought it was scentless. My MTH train makes alot of smoke and my mom gets upset when it causes the entire house to smell differently, so I usually only play with smoke for only a minute.
Stick with apporved fluids, burn your house down otherwise…
If you use a propylene glycol based fluid(like Bachmann), it won’t smell at all. The tradeoff with this, though, is that you’ll get very little smoke in most instances. Our engines usually aren’t designed to be used with a propylene glycol fluid, although it really won’t hurt anything.
Propylene glycol is the same ingredient in theatre fog machines often used for special effects. It has a very light musty odor in large quantities, but won’t smell at all in the amounts encountered with trains.
I will try the JTTrains smoke fluid I think, I just need to find a dealer that will ship it to the UK as JT do not ship overseas. Interesting comment on propylene glycol, may look at this if the JTTrains is too strong. Again many thanks for all your comments.
Clive