Just picked up a Lionel fan driven smoke unit, PN 8590-28. It has a three pole plug in the corner of the board that appears to need power plugged into it. My question is, what does each of these poles do, and what needs to be plugged where? It looks like the center pole is transformer “common”, and the other two are transformer “hot.” Is this right? And if so, is one hot for the fan and one for the heating element? Will the fan run all the time, and is that a good thing? Also, I can see the wicking under the board, and I’ve read that people pull that out and replace it with pink home insulation–again, good idea or bad idea? Do I need to glue some sort of tube or stack over that hole for the smoke to come out of (and to pour the fluid in?) Sorry about all the questions, this is my first attempt at installing one of these things in a loco that didn’t have it in the first place, so it’s all from scratch here. Thanks!
I don’t know whether changing the wick is a good or a bad thing; but either way it shouldn’t matter what the color is. The pink is just an Owens-Corning trademark for their Fiberglas-brand glass-fiber insulation. I have speculated that rock wool might be a better wick material, since it can stand much higher temperatures than glass fiber; but I have never persuaded any wick-changers to try it to see how it works.