Lionel vs MTH smoke systems

c.sam posted:

Not meant to be a bash or either manufacturer but my personal experience has been rather disappointing with Lionel's newer engines. Many of my steamers and a few of the diesels have succumbed to the dreaded 'blinking cab light' syndrome.  On the other hand, perhaps only one or two of my MTH engines have had any smoke issues over the years.

The Lionel units smoke quite well when working but why is it that they are so 'fragile' when Mike has been producing robust and reliable smoke units for many years?

I've had many a Lionel with the very poor smoking (older, early 2000's)... Guess they missed the boat both ways.

Around our club hence the phrase, "She's smoking like an MTH"

Every Lionel I've ever had with a fan driven smoke unit has smoked like a beast. First thing I always did was remove the smoke unit and throw away the factory wick material. Next I would replace the wick my homemade wick and seal the smoke box up with a new hand cut gasket and lastly I would enlarge the air intake hole slightly.

The only trouble I ever had was the occasional fan motor wearing out and getting loud.

I don't use the smoke units. I just don't need the frustration. I wish I could order the engines with or without.

Rod Miller

Any issues I had with Lionel smoke units had to do with a stalled smoke fan motor. Once replaced along with new batting, a Lionel smoke unit will smoke just as well as MTH.

I own and have owned numerous Lionel and MTH smoking locomotives in conventional, TMCC, Legacy, PS-1, PS-2 and PS-3. In each and every category from the mid 1990's to today, the MTH locos smoke better and the related components are more reliable than Lionel's.

Yes, the Lionel units will smoke well, even great, but that's not the point of this post. Am curious as what overall experiences you guys have had 'in the real world' of operating on  a layout. I like my locomotives to smoke and enjoy the effect of a large plume rising from the stack!

I had several of the older fan-driven locomotives that smoked poorly (No1218 Class A, a 4-8-2 Mountain, and the PRR K4.5) but were completely reliable. Still have the RS5 TMCC No611 that smokes great (purchased from and modified by Alex) and a JLC Allegheny that smokes well so far. Sold a Legacy UP Mikado that quit after a repair from Lionel that Pete was able to get going again with a good cleaning of the smoke unit ( I may have overfilled it) and still have the Legacy Southern U30 and a Union Pacific Alco PA that are both "On the blink"   Sorry - couldn't help it.

I have close to 20 Legacy engines. The issues I've had with them have all been wick material related aside from one older unit that had a bad motor. As someone above stated, when I have a problem, I pull the wick and put in the stuff that Lionel sells through their service dept. - After that they all work like magic.

On the other side, I have a couple of MTH engines, and they always smoke like chimneys . Which is good for some, but I don't even run Lionel engines at full smoke. Gets to be too much. I have had one MTH smoke unit fail, and it was the element.

So my opinion on them - I've had good luck with both Lionel and MTH smoke units. No real complaints here.

My suggestion on any smoke unit no matter who made it is to change the wick and make sure the box is sealed tight so as the only air that gets in is through the air intake and the only exit of smoke is through the stack.

When replacing the wick I use wood heater door rope gasket that can be bought at most hardware stores. Unravel it and cut to desired length. This works better for me than the factory wick or any other substitute like tiki wick.

Heater door rope gasket wicks better than anything I've tried and last three times longer. You buy by the foot for about five buck's. One foot when unraveled will do fourty to fifty engines.

A word of caution : soak the material with smoke oil in a gallon zip lock bag before you cut it so as not to breathe any stray fibers.

in my experience MTH uses two resisters that alone will increase smoke output!

MTH steam and diesels always seem to smoke better for me. My Lionel and Atlas engines all need help from the remote to keep them smoking.  

I haven't had any smoke unit "failures" in any of my engines yet. Sure, over time the smoke output was lacking to say the least but that was just from burnt wicks due to lack of smoke fluid. My engines all smoke about the same, MTH, Lionel, Atlas, as long as they have rope style wicks and full of fluid. My Sunset engines.... ehh. They will smoke great after they're upgraded.

My experience is that Legacy smoke units need more adjustments/maintenance than MTH's to ensure a good volume of smoke and generally that there are more things that seem to adversely affect Legacy units.

I think part of the problem is that the Legacy units are designed to produce different smoke effects according to the operating characteristics of the engine. Mike Reagan once explained that there are 7 different voltage levels that can be supplied to a Legacy unit running under command control so it is not a simple matter of adjusting from low to medium to high to get the smoke volume you want; EFX settings matter too as does the reliability of the power supply to the layout.

Also, I noticed an immediate improvement in the output of my Legacy units when I switched from an MTH Z4000 to a ZW-L transformer so I deduce there really is something in the different sine wave output as described in an older thread here.

Lionel's definitely had more issues with fan motors than MTH and I'm finding that my Legacy units need regular cleaning of the motors because smoke fluid seems to "leak" or be blown on to them from the chamber where the wadding is.

None of this is rocket science of course but it's a fair amount of trouble.

Laid of sick is right. Saw your video man btw so I was ready to tackle any smoke unit job. Here is some more good advice. 

Just got a good deal on a lionel up legacy gp30 off the bay. Man bought a few trains only ran once. Wife saw the bill and sold them. Stating I quote. My husband  thought he was a train man turns out he is not. Please help me get my money back I am selling his trains. Oh well his loss was my gain. Anyway back to the smoke unit.... it was never used switch was in the off position. so I put about 30 drops with my needle applicator down the stack. Which is one of those plastic funnels use to get the smoke fluid down from the shell hole to the hole in the smoke unit.I HATE THOSE THINGS. anyway I was getting good smoke on all settings low,med,high for about an hour adding 10 to 15 drops as nesscesary when the smoke vapors deminished.  After about a full hour it was almost nothing. No smoke vapor hardly at all comming out. So I took the shell of to check the unit. Opened here up and as laid off sick states in his video not enough fluid. The stock wick was burnt on the resistor and bone dry almost. So I carefully scraped it off and replaced the old stock wick with new rope wick from lionel.soaked it good then Put the smoke unit all back together. Now all is well. The only problem was and it was a PITA. Is there was a rubber foam gasket two of them one on top of the other placed on the shell over the plastic funnel. Cleaned of the greasy smoke fluid from the shell right there and cut some double stick foam tape to match and replaced it. Sticking it to the shell under the hole where the smoke comes out. Just like the original was. Put the shell back on and now it smokes you out of the room.

I love the smoke unit design but hate the smoke funnel on top because you cant see directly into the unit to see how much fluid is in there when you fill it. That is why the wick was badly chard.I initialy when priming it put in the lionel recommended drops 20 plus about 10 more and that was not enough to throughly soak the wick. So I assume after about 5 mins it was chared onto the resistor and adding fluid realy did not do much.also that funnel as mike regan said in a product video. Smoke fluid residue gets into the smoke funnel and causes the smoke vapors to collect inside the funnel on the left over residue and reduce the smoke output. He stated its better if you can get the fluid directly past everything and right on the wick or batting material for maximun smoke output. This funnel design though prohibbits that. The position of the smoke unit and body outlet hole make the funnel nessesary. Maybe the only way to properly know how much your engines smoke unit needs is to open the loco up and see. Also lionel recomendations skimp on the amount of fluid added. Mine obviously requied more to prime it than the instructions stated. DONT LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU. learn from my story and save yourself the headache and all the trouble opening your engines up if you can. Make sure your WICK IS THOROUGHLY SOAKED Thats all.

Properly maintained units from all manufacturers seem to smoke about the same for me. Just knowing the in's and out's of how they work is key. Btw laid off sicks videos about the amount of drops was a great help to me. As was mike regan videos. Thanks guys. 

MTH smoke units are . . .

I think many people also forget about the EFX with Legacy engines. Not only does it change the tone in the chuff or rpm, but increases the smoke output a great deal. It's just over looked...running the engine with the brake slider on. With MTH you have Min, Med, and Max under the smoke control menu, so set it and forget it. With Legacy you have to remember to run with the brake on.

MTH does vary the smoke with increased labor, they just don't have the variability of the Legacy sliding brake control.  Press the labor increase on the DCS Remote and you'll see the smoke volume increase, and the decrease control will reduce the smoke.

I run my locos with smoke, while I am working out.

Train room and weight bench are both in the attic.

So, every day locos will run on the layout for a steady 30-60 minutes.

All my MTH locos have been trouble free.

Almost every Lionel loco has had its fans replaced at least once. They do not hold up to steady and frequent running like the MTH.

Plus, Lionel does not smoke as well.

Of my four legacy steamers, two have had smoke unit failures not related to lack of smoke fluid. 

They were earlier production units (2010) and my most recent two have been problem free thus far.

Jeff2035 posted:

I run my locos with smoke, while I am working out.

Train room and weight bench are both in the attic.

So, every day locos will run on the layout for a steady 30-60 minutes.

All my MTH locos have been trouble free.

Almost every Lionel loco has had its fans replaced at least once. They do not hold up to steady and frequent running like the MTH.

Plus, Lionel does not smoke as well.

I've had problems with Lionel fan motors going out as well. I've learned to open up the air intake hole slightly and have not replaced a motor since. I'm not sure if this lightens the work load on the motor or if keeps the motor cooler. All I can say is I've not had a motor problem since I started opening the intake hole. Doesn't take much.

If I had to rate them, I'd have to rate the MTH smoke on the top of the heap.  That being said, I have plenty of Lionel stuff that smokes just fine, especially the newer Legacy models.  There is a lot you can do to improve the smoke from older Lionel smoke units, that's been discussed here a number of times.

I find that the brand of smoke fluid makes a difference in the volume, density and fragrance of the smoke produced.

I have tried most of the commercial smoke fluid brands and my own homemade concoctions. MTH's smoke fluid yields the best smoke in volume, density and fragrance.

I've had no complaints about the volume of smoke produced by Legacy units (pre-legacy was another story).

The issue has been one of reliability. Especially the fan motors which seemed to have a high failure rate for a while.

It seems that MTH and newer Legacy are good for factory installed smoke units.

The next question is what model to use to replace poor factory smoke units in older engines?

Is a specific lionel or MTH unit best for all replacement applications?

Or do you need to stay with the original manufactures style smoke unit so instalation is easier?

Mark

Mark, different engine models will have different requirements.  There's no "one size fits all" smoke unit.

It would be great if a sensor monitoring smoke fluid levels could be integrated into command systems. You could toggle a button and get a diagram of a fuel gauge showing fluid level. The biggest challenge is trying to figure out how much fluid to add -- too much and it gets out of the unit and too little and the wick burns. Many of the problems we have with smoke units boil down to problems caused by too much or too little fluid or issues with the small fan motors.