Caboose Smoke Unit Restore

Does all smoke fluid vaporize at about the same temperature...and what is that temperature? I'm getting about 200 degrees F on this caboose and see very little vapor, although there is some vapor. Mostly cedar scent though .

I suspect 200F is a bit low to actually vaporize it.  I don't know about the design you're talking about, no wick and just trying to vaporize on the surface of a puddle of smoke fluid sounds a lot more difficult than if you have a wick.

Yes. Just a vertical tube with a long skinny resistor in the middle. If there was ever packing, there's no sign of it. I can't decide if it would be better to pack it or not pack it To encourage vapor to waft out of it. It gets pretty hot at 200 deg F as far as the plastic near it is concerned. I'm doing about 1.5 watts or so at command voltages. 

1.5 watts wouldn't vaporize much, are you sure?  FWIW, all the caboose smoke units I've taken apart have had some wick material around the vertical resistor.  I've never gotten much smoke from any of them, which is why I do the fan driven smoke mod if I want smoke.

I little off topic. Have you ever tried to enhance the smoke in the Lionel Industrial Smokestack?

Doesn't seem to. I think I'm done with this experiment. I need to select a caboose and put one of these really neat things in it...

That's the ones I use.   I use a variable eBay power source with some diodes to drop the voltage to the motor.  I find I get pretty good smoke in the 4-5 volt range, and I have four diodes to drop the motor voltage down to the 2.5-3.5 volt range.  The little motor doesn't want to see more than that.

No. Is that the industrial factory building I have seen?

Thanks for that...hadn't even thought about the difference in HO or Command O in using this smoke unit. Very helpful.

cjack or GRJ,

Please tell me who makes the smoke unit in your photo and where I can purchase them.

Thank you.

I went back to 18 vrms without the diode...so that is around 5 watts and packed the smoke cylinder about half way up and around the resistor. Now I get a wisp of smoke out which is nicely visible. And the side of the caboose did not get as hot as before. I think vaporizing the fluid takes quite a few calories and keeps the assembly cooler on it's outside edge.

MTH part number AA-1600000 about $45 from Brasseurs or MTH. HO fan driven smoke unit.

Chuck, I'd be careful.  If you can, put some aluminum tape between the side of the caboose and the smoke unit to reflect some heat.  I know that I've seen a number of cabooses with melted sides from the smoke unit overheating.  I'm very leery of using the stock smoke units for any length of time on a caboose.  The fan driven unit doesn't get nearly as hot on the sides as it's moving air, and I can't even detect a temperature rise on the outside of the caboose with one of those running.

No. It is a lone tall smoke stack. Lionel #6-14142.

I looked that up, but no parts are listed.  Does that have fan driven smoke?  If so, you could do a "tuneup" on it.  If it's not fan driven, adding that would be the avenue to improve the smoke output.

Not having one myself, I just searched youtube for smoking cabooses and clipped the following from the first few videos that came up.  Is this the desired effect?  Can smoke units without a fan generate enough of an updraft to create the desired effect? 

To GRJ's point, it seems that over-powering the heater element to "push" a fraction of the smoke out the top is a risky business.  That is, it sure seems smarter to run the system at a lower power level while powering a fan to blow all or most of the generated smoke out the top.  Is this is inertia from manufacturers from when small inexpensive DC motor weren't readily available?

Stan, very few stock smoking cabooses look like that, especially under way!  Most of the time you can barely see the smoke when it's sitting still.  That moving one almost has to have a fan driven smoke unit or they're melting the side something awful!

Where did you find those, I don't see them searching for "smoking cabooses" in Google images.

Here's a Youtube video, but he says he cranked it up to 18 volts, and I'll bet this one isn't rated for command!

Here's another one, but same comment.

I searched Google videos (as opposed to images) for smoking caboose, and took snapshots of the videos I thought relevant.  The PRR image is from your 2nd video for example.

I'm trying to figure out what's going on.  There have been several recent threads on OGR about melting smoking caboose.  As I stated above, if you have to crank up the voltage to 18V command to get the desired level of smoke - but then the caboose melts - then contact Houston because we have a problem.  But if as you say (and what makes sense to me) you need a fan-driven unit to get the desired smoke at a safe operating temperature, then so be it.  In which case, someone needs to put together a how-to with the specific fan-driven smoke unit and whatever electronics is needed to drive it.

Other threads discussing how to reduce command voltage to safely generate wisps of smoke that can't be seen when moving seem to be a dead-end...in my opinion that is.

Well, I've described the fan driven installation a couple of times, it's pretty simple.  The MTH AA-1600000 HO smoke unit, and an adjustable buck power supply from eBay.  Add in a few diodes to drop the power to the little motor and you have the wiring done.

I wish my cabooses smoked half that well.  I just ended up with melted roof and no smoke in conventional.

If you really want to use the caboose smoke, I'd seriously consider a buck/boost power supply and the fan driven unit for conventional.  This will give you constant smoke over a wide range of voltages, and you can control the intensity of the smoke with the voltage of the power supply.  The smoke unit also runs a lot cooler and it's much easier to keep it from melting anything.  In one I did, I managed to mount the supply so I could drill a small hole in the frame and adjust the voltage without opening the caboose up.  I think I'd probably try to remove the adjustment pot and position it so I can do that for installations in the future, it was very convenient.