Railking Steam Engine

David,

You can purchase from MTH either an entire smoke unit or just the fan, however, that may not solve your problem.

The culprit may be any of the following:

• A defective fan motor
• A wire break between the electronics and the smoke unit
• A defective electronic board in the engine (PS1, PS2, PS3, Locosound, etc.) 

You don't say what kind of engine this is, i.e., PS2, PS3, Locosound, etc. More detail might be helpful.

Barry,

I did not see any wires that were broke. When I pull up the front part of the smoke unit it where the wick is it looked like it had a black chard look but did smoke when I turned on the unit. It has no sounds in it except for the whistle. I bought the engine in the late 90's to early 2000's.  I forgot to mention that it smoked great until a few months ago.

I hope that helps.

David

Barry, couldn't he just put a little DC to the fan to see if it worked?  It's probably no more than about 5 volts.

Earl

You can test the motor with 5VDC, that's what it expects.  Truthfully, it should run at 3-4 volts.

I had the same problem on a Railking GS-4. Way too much smoke fluid had gotten into the chamber with the fan and had soaked into the commutator/brush assembly on the small fan motor. Fortuitously, Ingenierio #1 had posted about how to clean these units and I followed his instructions and everything worked fine thereafter.

A search might turn up his excellent post and save you the cost of a new motor if it was posted before the switch to the new format.

Here is what I remember. The plastic fan pulls off the shaft. Then screws release the motor from the housing. Excess smoke fluid was cleaned from the fan housing. From there, I recall removing the end plastic cap from the motor and cleaning the commutator and brushes, then drying everything off. Some of the parts are very small, so I'd work over a table and over white paper so if a brush falls out, you can find it. Basically the whole operation was removing all of the smoke fluid, letting everything dry and then reassembling. Plug the motor back into the circuit board and apply power to the locomotive rollers to test.

If that fails, I recall another poster saying that Brasseur trains had the motors and the one for my locomotive was very reasonable -- about $6 if I remember.

If you search you can find the solution to almost every problem on this forum.

I've had excellent luck cleaning the dickens out of the motors with contact cleaner without dis-assembly, then lubing the shaft ends with a light machine oil.  I hate to take those little motors apart, they're pretty delicate.

Thanks everybody I'll try your suggestion. It's a nice engine not to have it smoking.

David

I got a new motor for an old Starter set engine direct from MTH last year.

Price was $6.00 if I recall correctly. I got some other stuff at the same time as the shipping was going to be at least $6.00 as well.

Replacing the motor fixed mine.

Be sure to replace the wick if it looks charred. A charred wick cannot work properly.

Make sure not to block the air path when you repack the wick into the chamber too.

What is the model number of this engine?  While cleaning a smoke fan motor may be possible, for the PS-2 engines it runs high risk.  It runs off the 5V regulator and a shorted fan motor can damage the regulator requiring a $80 board to be replaced.

For PS-1 engines the smoke unit is self contained and runs off track power.  Does this smoke unit have electronic components on it?  If so it is the PS-1 unit.

Sometimes the motor is fine and the impeller slips on the shaft.  If so a drop of superglue cures that.

Test the motor with a 3-5V battery or DC source.  G

anyone think ,just maybe some how the wick maybe blocking the impaller/fan?

In this case no, since he stated he took the shell off and examined the smoke unit and the fan is not working.  Granted I assume this means he can't see the impeller spinning.  I have seen loose impeller not rotate even thought the fan motor was turning.  G

Replace the fan motor and be done with it. It's cheap and easy to replace.

Unless you have very bad hearing, you should be able to hear the motor running, even if the fan is slipping on the shaft.  I don't see replacing the motor until you at least determine that the motor is bad.  It could well be the power to the motor, and not the motor.  It could also be something jamming the fan.

My experience was with a conventional Rail King GS-4. So, I had no voltage issues. After removing the body shell and smoke unit, when I was ready to test the fan, I plugged its connector to the circuit board and applied power to the locomotive rollers.

I saw that the fan wasn't spinning. I heard no sound from the motor. I pulled the fan rotor off and applied power to the rollers with all of the wiring attached and felt the shaft with my finger to make certain that it wasn't rotating. It wasn't, which isolated the problem to the motor or the plug connection on the circuit board.

 Two tiny tabs held the motor end cap on and by straightening them the motor cap came off. After cleaning everything and carefully reassembling the small parts, the motor worked fine. I pushed the fan rotor back on, reassembled the unit and it smoked poorly. I took it apart again and repositioned the wick and it worked fine. The squeal the fan rotor was making prior to the procedure also disappeared. Again I thank Ingenierio #1 for posting this information originally.

If you do not want to get into it this deeply, you got two excellent suggestions -- the spray electrical cleaner Gunrunner John suggested might well flush out any smoke fluid and reestablish electrical flow, or you could follow Paul S.'s suggestion and just buy a new motor for $6 if you have determined that the motor is indeed the problem.

Well that depends.  Some motors are pretty quiet, then there is the enviromentals.  I have a Z-4000 on the bench and that drowns out all minor sounds:-)  We still don't know if this is a PS-1 or PS-2 unit, so hard to go much further.  G

If this is a Protosounds loco, remove the smoke unit from the frame, unplug the motor from the circuit board, and try to run the smoke motor with a 9 volt battery, if it runs with the battery, plug the smoke motor back into the board, reinstall the smoke unit on the frame and try the smoke unit with the frame on the track. Very often the circuit board develops a problem with the electronic doodads that convert AC to DC current for the smoke motor, and the motor won't run even though the heater elements work. A temporary fix for the holidays would be to connect the smoke motor wires to the propulsion motor, that would give DC current for the smoke motor, but only when the loco is moving.