Smoke fluid fill legacy berkshire ?

A common issue.  The fluid for the whistle steam side of the dual smoke unit has to make it's way under the separating baffle in the smoke unit by wicking through a thick felt pad.  It takes quite a while for it to soak through, and sometimes it needs help.  Basically, it's a very poor system of handling filling that side, but it's cheap, so that's the way Lionel does it.

You're going to have to start with about 40-50 drops at first and let the locomotive soak overnight and see if you have better luck.

Got it. Thank you very much for the reply and explanation!  I will give that a go.  

I seem to recall reading (some where….may be here?) that replacing the felt pad with fiberglass packing would resolve that issue. Am I mistaken?

I had the same issue with my 2-8-0 Consolidation. Added fluid let it soak, added fluid let it soak etc. Had it blowing tons of smoke out of the stack. Still anemic whistle effect. Never opened it to see what's going on. It's boxed up at the moment.

Brad

As John mentioned, it can be a PITA to get the whistle side fully wicked up. The only other thing I can add to John’s comments is to slightly tilt the locomotive for a while. Tilt it towards the engineer’s side. Main stack is bowl is pretty much centered, whistle steam bowl is to the engineer’s side. After filling as John describes, tilting the locomotive towards that side, letting it lay against a towel, or something soft, will let gravity help you. Already have fixed a lot of this type of smoke unit burnt up due to insufficient fluid, especially on the whistle side…

Pat

Pat & John,  are MTH's whistle steam units better designed?

@harmonyards posted:

As John mentioned, it can be a PITA to get the whistle side fully wicked up. The only other thing I can add to John’s comments is to slightly tilt the locomotive for a while. Tilt it towards the engineer’s side. Main stack is bowl is pretty much centered, whistle steam bowl is to the engineer’s side. After filling as John describes, tilting the locomotive towards that side, letting it lay against a towel, or something soft, will let gravity help you. Already have fixed a lot of this type of smoke unit burnt up due to insufficient fluid, especially on the whistle side…

Pat

Sounds like a good idea. Never thought of that.

Brad

@c.sam posted:

Pat & John,  are MTH's whistle steam units better designed?

MTH uses separate smoke units for the whistle steam, they don't have any dual chamber smoke units, at least I've never seen or heard of one.  Some Lionel models still use the separate whistle steam smoke unit, but most use the dual smoke and pipe the smoke to the whistle.