Hey guys, have any of y'all ever successfully put a smoke unit in an HO Diesel locomotive, ive always thought, if we put lights, sound, details, etc. on our locos, why not make them smell like real diesels too? I'm hoping to somehow find out how to make smoke units smell like diesel exhaust instead of just looking like it, if any of y'all have ever done this or anybody has an idea how to, please let me know. Thanks. - Thomas
Welcome to TrainBoard Hornet540! Have you ever really smelled a diesel exhaust? Before you smoke up the house you better get permission from your parents! With any success at all, you will soon pass out, or cough yourself into a fit. I would guess your parents would give you eating money, and leave for an extended vacation and tell you to go for it! Besides, it is easy to put a smoke unit into a diesel, but you will have to figure out some way to operate the bellows, or make a tiny fan to blow a stream of air through the unit then duct it out the exhaust pipes. To get the smell you want, be sure to use 90 weight Transmission oil without the graphite in it. 3-in-One oil will burn white and look like a steam engine, but the 90 wt. will give off a black sooty smoke more like most diesels that go through here. Do remember to wipe the grimy residue off your tracks before it collects enough to insulate them, or catch fire. If you can, Let us know how well it works, after you try it out. (I'm pullin' your leg, of course!)
Larger scale models, O and G scale, of diesels come stock with smoke makers and blowers. It looks pretty cool, especially if they have DCC sound on board.
Thanks Watash, and by the way, I'm not that new here and I've talked to you before :teeth: haha. Any ways, I understand your concept, but when you say to use a fan or bellows to get the smoke out of the loco, you are implying that there is a smoke generator, or unit, or something creating the smoke correct? I don't have much experience with them, but what I do know is that most have some sort of "dish" if you will, where the smoke fluid is placed and subsequently heated or "burned" I would guess to create the smoke. So are you saying that "burning" 90 wt. trans oil in that area would produce what I am looking for? Haha, I know this whole concept may sound rediculous or hazardous, but I don't plan on continuously running it around the layout, and there is ventilation in our layout room . Thanks for the help guys.
I was joking with you Hornet! The only smoke unit I have actually seen was from a TYCO 2-8-0 steamer. You were instructed to drip about 4 drops of a special fluid (Like 3-in-One oil), into the smoke stack. When the engine is moved along a track long enough, a heating element would boil the oil until it gave off a white smoke. Here is the big laugh: The factory had installed a 'single' lobe cam on the rear driver axle to operate a tiny bellows to make puffs of smoke blow up out of the smoke stack! Can you imagine? We could hardly see it for laughing as it went limping down the track! What a toy! It only had one puff for each revolution of a driver! We were too embarrassed to operate it for anyone! No, do not try to use 90 weight oil! It will soot up the whole room and everything in it! What happens is, any oil put in a smoke unite, stay there and will smoke when heated, until all the oil is gone. Then the unit burns up. It was a sales gimmick, that sounds good, and enough people were gullible to buy them, so the idea stuck even to this day! When your room begins to fog up and you are gasping for breath with watery eyes, you try to shut off the smoke, and find there is no way except to remove the engine from the layout room! They work great out doors! When you say 'ventilated' room, I hope you mean the room has fresh air coming in and is exhausted out of the room into outside air. If it is just a normal central heat and air system, you will send your smoke all through the house, and soon deposit a yellowy oily goo on all the curtains, table cloth, bed spreads, and all the furniture, plates and dishes!
Moin, moin Smoke in a diesel - no problem. The first decoder I installed myself found his place in a Vossloh BLUE TIGER http://www.emcf.de/bilder/pub/LOKOSE/pix/blue-tiger.jpg Testrun without the body was excellent. While I was doing a testrun with the just completed BLUE TIGER, my wife asked me, if there was a smoke-unit installed. Indeed there was a smoke-unit, normally called decoder .-( Tschuess / bye Harald
I had a large scale diesel with a smoke unit a few years back. It really didn't do much, certainly didn't look real. But then I've not yet seen a convincing steam job either.
I experimented with an open frame, (no boiler), with a smoke unit in the tender. A small fan was mounted on a little motor that would blow a stream of air through the smoke unit, into a tube going around the engine motor and into a bellows under where the smoke stack would be. The 'exhaust' stack was slightly smaller than the in-coming tube, and a flap valve shut off when the bellows 'inhaled'. Smoke could exhaust through the whole rig when idle. The moving half of the bellows was on the bottom, with a small roller that ran on a 4 lobe cam on the front axle, so it would 'puff' like a real steamer did. I had enough weight on the 'engine' so it would keep on going when trying to exhaust a puff, but it was still a little 'jerky' at slow speeds. The puffs were fairly well defined, and looked better from about 15mph up to about 40mph, but then anything above that and the bellows was just skipping along on the top of the cam lobes and not enough smoke was being generated to make a steady stream. That was when I learned about coughing and gagging on all the smoke in a closed room with the air conditioning on. My wife was furious and we never did get the house cleaned, or the smoke smell out! (Maybe some day she'll let me sleep in the house again.) It was HO and I haven't tried since then.
