CC 726 Berk Smoke Unit Question

I know I was not running at 18 volts and this is the results I was getting.  I do not believe the smoke unit has a fan.

THANKS for sharing that nice video! Your engine seems to have been running much faster than mine. 

Perhaps there is an air bubble causing my problem?  

That could be, it's not a very big hole in the stack on these new 726's.

Charlie:

Again, THANKS!   I have tried blowing through the small Lionel funnel that came with my VL Hudson, and that seems to help somewhat - I will keep working with it!

I also tried 8-10 drops of JTs when I got my CC Berk and found the smoke insufficient.  After priming with around 15-20 drops it smokes like the unit in MichRR714s video above, I guess the wick was really dry.

Does anyone know if this particular smoke unit has a fan or some sort of mechanical puffing device? 

I tried adding some more fluid, but still no decent output! 

I will call Lionel Service next week and report back.

It is a mechanical unit.  Good luck getting yours to work right, I like the smoke effect very much on this one.

Many folks make a modification to that type of locomotive to get better smoke at low speed.  The easiest thing to do is to have some back to back diodes in series with one of the motor leads to drop the voltage to the motor.  This allows the smoke unit to receive more voltage for a given speed and yields better low speed smoke performance.

THANKS to all for the suggestions! When I reread the instruction manual, it clearly stated that the smoke output was BETTER at higher voltages and with a full train behind it. I should have my tender NLT Tuesday, and I will couple a medium-weight train to the engine/tender and retest the smoke unit.