Really nice work John. I have a Lionel Odyssey consolidation with a puffer that will benefit from your board and an MTH smoke unit.
Yep, that would be a great looking conversion! 
That Camelback was an MTH PS/1 unit, so the great MTH smoke unit was obviously retained. My only complaint is I have to fill it every few trips around the club layout! 
For those kinds of conversions, you want a PS/1 smoke unit if you can find one. You can use a PS/2, but you have to change the resistors as the TMCC R2LC can't drive 8 ohms of heater. The PS/1 smoke unit has on-board logic to control the smoke resistors, so you get the proper amount of heat from almost any voltage.
Thanks for the tip.
Maybe what we need next is a tender that carries smoke fluid and pumps it up to the locomotive as needed.
I'd like to come up with a smoke unit with a larger reservoir, that would be a useful addition. 
I think I'll pass on trying to do a tender full of smoke fluid.
Originally Posted by gunrunnerjohn:
I'd like to come up with a smoke unit with a larger reservoir, that would be a useful addition. I think I'll pass on trying to do a tender full of smoke fluid.
Huh...it could be an oil tender with a vertical fluid level gauge on it's side...it'll be the first!
Thanks for the videos, the chuffer is really great!
Originally Posted by gunrunnerjohn:
Yep, that would be a great looking conversion! That Camelback was an MTH PS/1 unit, so the great MTH smoke unit was obviously retained. My only complaint is I have to fill it every few trips around the club layout!
For those kinds of conversions, you want a PS/1 smoke unit if you can find one. You can use a PS/2, but you have to change the resistors as the TMCC R2LC can't drive 8 ohms of heater. The PS/1 smoke unit has on-board logic to control the smoke resistors, so you get the proper amount of heat from almost any voltage.
Thanks for this good advice, John. What value resistor do you recommend if using a PS 2 smoke unit? 18 ohm? 22 ohm?
Mack
If you're going to retain both resistors, you need to have them be at least 36 ohms, for a net of 18 ohms. If you use a single resistor, an 18 ohm one is as low as I'd go. Going any lower risks overloading the triac on the R2LC unless you provide a heatsink for it.
