Postwar Smoke Units: Pill vs. Liquid

Postwar Lionel liquid and pellet smoke units are of very different construction.
The liquid smoke units are made almost entirely of plastic and are not really designed to be disassembled or repaired. (I've had them apart though).  As far as I know, no renewal parts, or explosion diagrams are available. It's been awhile, but as I recall, the heater element is very similar to what has been used in the modern era. It's a wire wound resistor that gets good and hot.

I think the Lionel Service manual pages give a fairly good idea of what the pellet type smoke unit looks like, and how it works.
Here is a link to the subject.: Lionel Smoke units
You will notice that they come attached to a few different style mounting brackets.
Here is a link to a specific page that shows the components of an early style unit: Smoke unit

Note that the pellet type smoke units did have a lining that would absorb smoke fluid and act as wicking if you put liquid smoke in the unit. I have some smoke units that were assembled without the wicking. I purchased them on EBay. I am certain they came from the Madison Hardware auction. Why they were put together without the wicking is a mystery to me. They do work without it.

I have a 2020 turbine from my childhood. It was from 1946. It used the "pill" for smoke, and used the headlight bulb to heat the pill. The bulb has a dimple in it and you dropped the pill down the stack and it hopefully landed in the dimple! When heated, the pill would melt and give off smoke. When the train was shut off, the material in the dimple would solidify and be usable again and just left there on the bulb. No way is this compatible with liquid smoke. It would run off the bulb dimple and all over the inside of your engine and track, layout etc. although the residue left on the bulb might work? There was a mechanical plate "puffer" which was driven by the wheels. I remember as a kid watching in amasment when conditions were right it would blow perfect smoke rings!

Paul

I have a 2018 I recently took apart. The loco was new to me and I never had a pellet smoker as a kid, too expensive for my folks.

I cleaned out the bowl and then reassembled with no wicking. 1-2 drops and she smokes just fine. Others add wicking to the bowl and that will be my next experiment as well.

Good Luck!

Paul's 1946 version of the 2020 has what is commonly called a "smoke bulb" smoke unit. There were only three engines that used it, all made in 1946 only: 2020 turbine, 671 turbine, and 726 Berkshire.
The #196 pellets designed for use with the smoke bulb were made from ammonium nitrate. These pellets have not been available for quite a few years. Sometimes an old package shows up. Usually the pellets are decomposed.
If one was to find some of those pellets, it would not be a good idea to use them. They were corrosive.
The pellets came in little rectangular clear plastic containers with a spring clip to hold the lid in place. At one time, even an empty container could fetch a good buck.

I never had much luck getting my smoke bulb engines to smoke with either SP smoke pellets or Lionel smoke fluid.
Some folks have commented that their locomotives smoke fine using one of these products.

Starting in 1947, Lionel offered kits to convert smoke bulb engines to use the more modern heater type smoke units. Those kits were available right through 1969.