Smoke Pellet Compatibility - Help!

You're fine.  The first Lionel smoke system used a very expensive light bulb with a "dimple" and a fairly noxious smoke pellet.   This was back in the late 1930's.   Later smoke units used parathane pellets and a heating element (nichrome wire) to melt the pellets and make the smoke vapor.   The nichrome wire units can use liquid smoke fluid so long as the wire isn't too heavily crusted with the older pellet residue.

Lionel bulb type smoke units were used in the 1946 line only.

Only turbines and Berkshires had them.

Before you decide to put smoke fluid in there, you may wish to consider that the aroma of liquid smoke is very different than the pellets. That written, many people do use the fluid.

 

Your Berkshire may have enough residual smoke material in the smoke unit to smoke for a while before you need to add anything. One of the biggest problems with pellet type smoke units is putting too many pellets in there.

Cory, the small bulb you see is the headlight bulb.  The wire resistor is the smoke element.  As CW said, only the 46 units had the bulb.

 

I believe TrainZ makes an after market pill.  Or many convert the unit to a liquid element like Lionel uses on the modern engines prior to the fan driven units.  Or you use liquid with your current unit.  G

I use mega steam pellet scent liquid in all my PW steamers. They all still have their original pill units & all smoke pretty well with the fluid.

Thanks for the info guys,  I think I'm going to wait for all the residue to smoke its way out, and then start using fluid in it.

You might be waiting a long time .  That pellet stuff is known to last for years.

One more tip: Do not put anything other than smoke material into the smokestack / smoke unit.
The second most common problem with pellet type smoke units is physical damage from people putting foreign objects down the stack and breaking the heater element.
Lionel did provide a wooden tamping tool, but it was shaped to minimize the possibility of damage. It could only be inserted just so far.

If your inclined you can remove the smoke chamber from the locomotive and carefully remove the cap which will have the element attached and scrape the bottom of the chamber clean but save the remnants, old melted smoke pellets and wading. Then you can pack the bottom of the chamber with a small amount of pink fiberglass insulation, then carefully snap the cap back on. 

 

You can then break up the remnants of the old smoke pellets you scrapped and use that for a long time, just remember not to add too much.  I've done this on all of my postwar engines, it actually makes the smoke units work better and I have the original smoke pellet smoke.

 

Paul

Also, if you are at all interested in retaining the original smoke pellet scent, it has been my experience that you will be unlikely to recapture it once you begin using modern liquids.

Just go easy (two or three drops) at a time.  You don't want to flood the engine.  Otherwise you will have one oily locomotive.

'SP' smoke pellets are available from Trainz: http://www.trainz.com/p-257133...ttle-50-pellets.aspx

 

Since Lionel's patent finally expired, these are made using the original formula.

 

I figure I'd post a few pics of a Lionel postwar 736 that I cleaned out the smoke unit on a few weeks ago to show how easy it really is, if anyone is interested...

 

 

 

 

The pink is the wadding and the white is the smoke pellet powder which is very usable.  I packed the chamber with pick fiberglass insulation then added a few drops of smoke fluid to keep it from charring then reassembled the unit and added "some" of the powder and it started to smoke immediately.  What a great scent!

 

Paul