If you soak the cardboard spots with WD-40, the cardboard will soften and come off.
Looking at the smoke stack, with no ring/lip around the top, shows that this loco is from the earlier batch fitted with a Seuthe smoke generator. As poor of a smoker as that is, it's still better than the later locos with the home brew smoke generator and the ring/lip on the smoke stack.
You can put a few drops in and run the power up to 16 volts in neutral. If it's going to smoke, that will do it.
Make sure the eccentric crank screws are tight. The cranks are plastic and will snap off if the screw gets loose or the cranks get into the wrong position.
