Anyone know a good maintenance shop in the St. Louis market that can upgrade my polar express Berkshire from a puffer to a smoke driven unit?
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Switchstand in overland is a good shop to go to. Roscoe Sloat is the owner and works on a little bit of everything.
9120
Lackland Road
Overland MO 63114
hope this helps
Remember, you'll need more than just the smoke unit for a full upgrade with chuffing smoke, etc. Here's one I did with the "works".
This one got the ERR Cruise Commander, ERR RailSounds Commander, fan driven smoke, the Super-Chuffer, and LED lighting all around.
Wait a minute, John. I have the lionchief ready-to-run set. The one you just showed seemed to have front and back marker lights, amber glowing, engine glowing. I can get that upgrade on my ready-to-run set?
The locomotive in the picture is the Series II conventional set from a number of years ago. The electronics were completely replaced with ERR command components, the Cruise Commander and RailSounds Commander.
The front class lights where there originally, but on the stock locomotive they're pretty dim. Stock they are lit by a single bulb that also illuminates the headlight. I replaced them all with individual direct illumination LED's. The tender doesn't have any lighting stock, so the markers and backup light were added. I also added an automatic cab light and Rule-17 LED headlight.
I forgot, it also got the flickering firebox mod. 
Mine is the lion chief version. Is it possible to add the super chuffer, fan smoke to it and keep Tom Hanks announcements?
Although I've never done it, the LC stuff has a optical chopper for the chuff switch, so it's possibly possible to either tap into it or replace it and have the chuff available for fan driven smoke.
I did mine a different way, I just created a sound car in the baggage car that has all the PE sounds.
I’m going to try it on a junker I just bought and I’ll let you know how it went.
