Smoke Unit on Conventional Steamer Needs Repaired

For a quick fix, you can use fiberglass insulation from the attic.  It's not as good as the right stuff, but it works OK.  OTOH, what I see in your pictures doesn't seem that it's that bad.  A really quick fix is to simply turn the wad over and put the charred side down.  I suspect you may have a problem finding a 20 ohm 3W wirewound resistor locally, I buy mine at Digikey.  OTOH, unless the smoke resistor is burned out, why do you feel you need a new one?

From the pics, carefully clean the material that is stuck on the resistor. Another choice to fill the bowl is a tiki torch wick. Open one up til you get to a single strand, fluff it up and stuff it in there. Here's a video Lionel did on another smoke unit, but you get to see the wick. About 1:40 in the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkDlQ5Cwwlk

Hi JOHN, thanks for your reply. When the RTR Docksider was new it smoked very well at medium & high speeds as expected. Now it barely smokes even when run at high speed. Of course my grandson runs it fast!

You were right local electronics store doesn't have it. Their  wirewound Resistors are 2w, (they don't have 3w option), & their resisters are too large to fit into the smoke unit. As you expected Digi-Key had the 3w 20 ohm in size that would fit. There are 12 to chose from, 5 have 5% axial tolerance and the rest have 1% axial; is there a preference? 

As another alternative I searched "smoke" on Lionel support Replacement Parts. Wow there is a lot of stuff for Legacy lovomotives, almost nothing for conventional ones. The closest I could find was an 18 ohm ceramic resistor 691RESC018, wattage not specified. Would that be a reasonable replacement?

Hi JEFF, thanks for you reply. It looks like I only need to go to Walmart or Target for Tiki Torch wicks for $2.50! But if I order parts from Lionel I can get a small amount of batting 7/8" called wick/sleeve part no. 6008141056 for 80 cents. Do you have any suggested cleaning solution for the existing wick? Acetone? Denatured Alcohol?

Thanks again Guys!

5% is more than sufficient for this task.  I typically sort by price and then look at the specifications to match the size reasonably close to what I'm replacing.

   I didn't look, but think the wick sleeve is exactly what it says, a sleeve. Most folks actually remove it for better air flow around the resistor. And it.tends to.burn itself onto the resistor, fouling things. But a few, like Generals, don't have a good resevoir and room for tons of packing, and so benefit from it holding the normal 3-5 drops of fluid max on those.

Maybe get a few different ohm values to taylor the heat to your locos needs and your expected output better at "voltage X".

Tiki wick can have different types of threads within a strand. If so, test for the least flammable substance with an actual flame, and pick that for use.(also.watch for excess shrivelling and opt for stability)