Volume of Smoke Fluid In A Lehigh Valley 409

Classic Toy Trains Forum
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I have a Lionel GP style locomotive from the 90’s I think.(Red Lehigh Valley 409) It has a smoke unit with a switch underneath for smoke or no smoke. I’m interested in geting it to smoke this christmas. Of course I will turn the smoke unit switch to smoke. Question is how many drops of smoke fluid should I drop in the stack, looking for a volume, 10-20-30 drops?? Are these units finnicky? Are they very productive with the smoke or were they poorly designed and not worth the trouble. Thanks for relaying your experiences.

As you can tell, I’m kind of new new to this hobby. Nowmy understandin is this locomotive has sounds and crew talk. The engine sounds are excellent but I hear no crew talk. When I first received this engine I did hear crew talk, but now nothing. Is there a method to reset the electronics so all the sounds work as original or are these electronics known to fail. There is a switch underneath for sounds or no sounds, which I have already set to sounds.

Thanks Again For your Knowledge

Michael

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Nobody? OK, I’ll weigh in for what it’s worth.

I don’t have any Lionel GP types, but from my experience with recent production Lionels (last 25 or so years) the amount of smoke fluid you put in varies with the unit particular to the model. My advice since you don’t have the owners manual is start small, say five drops maximum at first. If the smoke doesn’t last too long, say more than five minutes try upping the amount, six, seven, eight drops, you get the picture.

As far as actual smoke outputs that’s going to vary as well. Some Lionel smoke units are going to be a “three” on a scale of one to ten. Some will smoke more. Few of the vintage of your GP will put out smoke in “yard fogger” quantities like the MTH units will. And the smoke may vary with how much of a load is on the engine, that is the harder it’s working the more smoke you’ll get.

As far as the crew sounds are concerned I don’t have any advice on that one, I’m stumped!

Good luck!

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Is this what you have? 6-18589? If so are you running it with TMCC or conventional ?? That may have to do with the sound issues.

Lehigh Valley TMCC Alco C-420 Diesel #409 (lionel.com)

Lionel 6-18589 Lehigh Valley C-420 Diesel Locomotive #409 LN/Box | eBay

See if this helps.

Lionel Alco C-420 Owner’s Manual | Manualzz