MTH Trains

Your salesman needs to find a new line of work.  MTH locomotives use smoke fluid.

I have actually seen toy trains that smoked without pills or fluid, they usually didn't run after that but still...

Jerry

He's right... If you don't want to use the smoke feature.  It can be turned on or off.

If you want them to smoke however, you definitely need to use smoke fluid just like any other modern-era locomotive equipped with smoke fluid.

The MTH chuff syncronized fan driven smoke units are in my opinion, the best you can get. They use copius quantities of smoke fluid when you run them full-out.

Gilly

MTH set the bar very high for volume of smoke and synchronizing the smoke to the chuff rate on steam, and to a lesser extent the load on diesels. When I run with the smoke units on (rarely) I usually have the output set to minimum. Otherwise you're refilling the smoke unit frequently.

I had one of those too.  It was one of the more memorable toy locomotives I ever had.

Hey L.I.TRAIN, thanks for the invite, I'll have family & friends at my house very early and all day on Superbowl Sunday so I won't be able to make it however I'll definitely come by your club on one of your upcoming Open houses.  As for my LHS, I'd rather not throw him under the bus with bum scoop info that they provided; and they treat me rather well, so I'll chuck it up as a mistake and a learning experience and be happy that I got the OGR membership to bail me out.

Well Said.

Have fun with the Family on Superbowl Sunday.

You got that right Allan. Just when you think you have heard it all

Perhaps the salesman simply mis-spoke and was thinking about how the latest version of MTH engines (PS3) do not need a battery...an arguably significant change following decades of struggling with dead batteries, leaking batteries, etc.

I just had an MTH engine smoke with no fluid, it's on the bench for repair now.

Mine was my Grandfathers 1666E. It was always sitting on the shelf in his workshop and I was always told it didn't run. Well a few Christmas's after he passed and my dad had gotten the locomotive I decided to put it on the track to see if it was really broken or not. Powered it up and nothing at first, I flipped the E-unit lever back and forth a couple times, heard it clink, motor buzzed, headlight went out and yellowish smoke began to pour out of it from everywhere, scared the bejeebers out of my 10 year old butt!

I actually rebuilt that engine a few years ago, repainted it and found it a tender and a set of 2600 passenger cars at York. It is probably my proudest accomplishment simply because of it's history and the fact that it hadn't run since WW2.

Jerry 

Jerry, your grandfather is lookin down and wearin a great big smile on his face after you did that.

Rick

Jerry

Greta story!!! your family ties run deep

Marshelangelo

we go into heavy duty work load so the next open house is Thanksgiving weekend. the club link is in my signature below

Steve

We're all dying to know:  what was its problem?

Near as I could tell, the armature was toast, the copper "plates" had really bad arc burns on them and the wiring was all black and flaky and the e-unit fingers were gone. I think someone tried to rewire it and either gave up or never could get it to work and put it back together wrong. Fast forward 20-30 years and little Jerry comes along and applies full ZW power to it right out the gate and poof!

I gutted a basket case 1666E I picked up at a Greenbergs show for motor parts and siderods and some odds and ends from Stan Orr. Took me a while to get it to work but it could still use some tweaking, I don't run it much but every once in a while when I come across it in the "Train Pile" and I'll let it take a few laps but I still wait for that dreaded yellow smoke again since it still has it's original e-unit and field windings.

Jerry