Yesterday I was stunned to see a 2" yellow flame coming out of the stack on my Lionel Docksider! With every puff the flame returned for 3 minutes. This could ignite scenery and be a disaster ! I used Hot chocolate scent smoke fluid from JT'S Mega Steam. 20 years and I have never witnessed this. Anyone else?
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I have had it happen a few times. The resistor overheated and set the smoke fluid/batting on fire. In my experience, there is a correlation with both scented fluid and non-approved fluid and this occurring.
Steamer turbo failure.
Just as likely the batting as fluid, maybe more so. Even a combo.
Test them against flame and red hot metal. I doubt you'll get the fluid to light, and batting will develop embers and glow at least.
But considering the ajr influx, the fluid might just need that air/fuel (gas) to hit an ideal stoichiometry for ignition to ever happen.
And în which case any embers in burning packing may help "gas" ignition too.
Close inspection of the packing and element is the best speculation 😉
I’ve had the same thing happen on a 0-6-0 dockside switcher as well years ago. Never used the smoke unit again in it.
Was it an ALCo?
Jon 
KOOLjock1 posted:Was it an ALCo?
Jon
Had the same question! There was a little range on the alco air slide throttle that would result in a bit of unburned fuel ending up in the exhaust manifold. If you did that for a little while then opened it up you could get quite the show. Had to be careful not to catch the trees on fire!
Put it to use. Good for soldering catenary
bmoran4 posted:
That would be bad in a tunnel. Makes me glad I turn off the smoke units.
Bad smoke resistor ?
Likely the voltage regulator for the smoke unit went bad, allowing full track voltage to the unit. All the more reason to be using non-combustible smoke fluids, or turn the units off.
Chris
LVHR
maybe the voltage going to the resistor is too high causing the resister to burn out or glow red the nichrome wire also sounds like the fan motor was running to fast possibly also supply voltage was to high on smoke unit heater n fan!
Chris has the answer, that's typically the voltage regulator going bad. It's spectacular for a short time, then it destroys the smoke unit PCB and leaves a really lousy burnt fiberglass smell.
The tank car issue was a defective regulator board, that's why there was a recall.
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