4 year old and a bottle of smoke fluid...

Turn the engine upside down and let it drain out. Give it overnight.

Scott Smith

Thanks Scott, I capsized it and will give it some time.

Ben 

Hey, at least he didn't use the eye dropper to put smoke fluid drops in his eyes!

Gotta watch them little'uns like a hawk. They move FAST!!!  

Man, what ever you do don't send that kid to my house! Your son hanging out with our boys here we'd have complete chaos!! You never know what the little guys will do. Like the time I found our 4 year old standing on top of the city section of the layout King Kong style playing with the cars and trucks.

The good news is that is sounds like no major damage was done.

To answer your question #2: I use paper towels and Q-tips to absorb as much of the overflow as possible. It takes several passes. Then over the course of a few days the remaining residue just evaporates and the sheen disappears in my experience.

I could easily envision a whole bottle of Visine or Children's Tylenol going down the stack   

A little Robitussin might prevent the Challenger from developing a smoker's cough. ;-)

Wipe off all you can, then carefully dust the sticky parts with cornstarch or, if you don't have that, baking soda. Let it sit awhile, then wipe off the cornstarch. In this case, you don't really need the slight abrasiveness of the soda, and the cornstarch is more absorbent. You should be able to use the q-tips to get it out of small spaces. 

Okay, everybody fess up...how many of us did some variation of this when we were little?

Hey Ben,

Fortunately, most smoke units will hold more than the suggested filling amount so with the advice of the forum guys you should be ok with no harm to the engine after draining out as much as you can. Regarding the residue...be careful not to use anything with abrasives which might damage the paint or decals.

FYI:

JT's Mega-Steam is putting the finishing touches on an exciting new product that is precisely made for cleaning smoke fluid spills from locomotive shells. Try as hard as we all do, everyone has a spill once in a while! "It happens!" It will be called b-Gone Cleaner. It is in the final stages of development. Watch for further announcements coming soon.

Mega-Steam

www.megasteam.com

4 year olds should not be hitting the bottle

Heh, I hear you.

My granddaughter will grab anything in reach and spill it or drink it.

So I keep all that sort of material on higher shelves.

And YES, they are quick !!!

When I was little, we didn't have smoke liquid, only pellets.

But when my 2026 started getting low on smoke, I was guilty of putting more smoke pellets in.  After all, if one pellet makes it smoke, lots of pellets should make it smoke more, right?

Of course it clogged the smoke generator, and the 2026 didn't smoke again until years later, when grown-up me brought it back to life and cleaned all the waxy crud out of it.

When I worked at a Lionel Service Station in the 70's, they still hadn't come out with new generation smoke pellets.  As a result, when someone would bring-in an engine for overhaul, we'd chip-out the coagulated smoke pellet remains and hoard them like a crack dealer. This was only done as part of the smoke unit overhaul (new fiberglass mat, new element), so since we had to clean out the old unit anyway...

Around Christmas time when I was a kid and out of pellets, I still remember my Uncle Nick sticking his lit Lucky Strike cigarette in the smoke stack (so round, so firm, so fully packed).  Ahh the Canadian Club must have been flowing like water at those family get-togethers!  Back then, cigarettes and booze apparently didn't kill you.  Fond memories and great times, and never once burned down the house!  RIP Uncle Nick!

Rich