M1a Smoke Problems...

From the photo, I can't tell if it's an overfilled smoke unit or just Lionel's "cylinder steam" feature.

I would guess that the smoke unit is not lined up entirely with the stack.

I've had that issue with a railking steamer, I just blew a quick breath of air into the smokestack and it worked fine. Sometimes I think an air bubble can form and block the smoke from coming out. Although, if that doesn't work, it may be something else blocking the stack or the alignment of the unit as KevinB pointed out....

Blow down the stack, with a strong breath of air. This should correct your issue

Alex

second that

If it was repaired once, than more than likely somebody did not line the smoke unit up with the stack...

And while I'm at it, would this possibly be the cause of the same issue that my older TMCC Lionel H10 has?

Two common causes, the fan not running or a misaligned stack.

The fan is definitely running, as the smoke up top is working very nicely. A few other people said it may be a misaligned stack, so I would guess that this is the problem. What is the least painful way to fix this?

For a misaligned stack, I can't see you fixing it without taking the boiler shell off.

Okay, I was expecting that. Is it an easy fix other than that?

It's likely the bracket is bent if the some unit is frame mounted.  I haven't had one of those apart, so I'm not sure what they look like and how the smoke unit is mounted.  Some mount it in the boiler shell, in that case it may not have been aligned before they tightened the screws.

When I see something like this, I open it up, usually the cause is fairly obvious.

Hopefully a Lionel tech did not do that?  If mounted to frame, you can some times loosen the shell and lift and reseat. Than retighten making sure no wires pinch under shell.

What I typically do on these is keep the smoke mount screws slightly loose as I reinstall the shell.  Allows the smoke unit to position to a stress free mount orientation.  Than I tighten shell screws followed by smoke mount screws.

If mounted to shell, you have to remove shell to access properly.  No excuse for that type of reassembly.  G

That's great, and no shipping back to Lionel with all the potential risks that entails.

This is the old man here.  Yeah, I had a fit when I saw the smoke pouring out.  The original engine that came from the dealer was DOA, and we waited 6 weeks to get a replacement.  I detest opening up modern era engines, but as Steven alluded to, this only took about 10 or 15 minutes to fix.  Can't even say that the smoke unit appeared to be misaligned, but simply unscrewed it and remounted in, and that seemed to do the trick.  Thank goodness.  I hate packing and shipping these things back.  Thanks for your suggestions John and everybody else.

It's great that this was a simple fix.  So that one is mounted in the boiler?  They most have worked to get it out of alignment that much!   Usually those line right up, it's the frame mounted ones that sometimes get out of whack for me.