Smoke

[Aircool]

I'm sure there must be a solution, Just acquired a Lord of the Isle with smoke, however I can't run it a realistic speed and produce smoke, if I hold the driving wheels off the track and run it at about 11volts it bellows smoke but at that voltage the train is going to do the equivalent of 100mph+! I have it in mind to add ballast to the tender and carriages to slow it down but wonder how others have dealt with this?

[ColinB]

I must admit the only way I got mine to work properly was when I rewired them to DCC. Then they get the full 12 volts plus it is easy to turn it off and on reducing the risk of distorting the loco body and burning out the heater element. As I say it is a bit of an extreme way to get smoke.

[96RAF]

TRS Trains has a more voluminous ‘smoke’ system using a water fed ioniser. His smoke chuffs very realistically and is somehow linked to sound decoder output (like those disco lights that respond to sound).

[ColinB]

I forgot to mention, when I was playing with mine (an old Hornby one out of Stowe) I found I got the best results at about 10 volts. Any higher than that and the oil just vaporised giving no smoke. These things did originally work although the two I had ( one in Stowe and another in a LMS Compond) never did seem to work that well. 

[Jimbo1707820979]

Is there a concensus about the usefulness of smoke?   I like the idea but there are so many negative reports about it.   Is it really worth bothering to use, renovate or install smoke units ?  My apologies if this subject already flogged to death . 😛

[Going Spare]

Your Lord of The Isles, probably dating from the early 1960s, was fitted with the original tube smoke generator, before synchrosmoke and the final plastic bodied unit.  As it was wired in parallel with the motor, smoke generation - such as it was - was commensurate with speed.  To load the tender and train with ballast will probably over-tax the adhesion of the single driving wheels, possibly causing the wheels to slip, unless you are still using steel rail so that the Magnahesion chassis magnet can help.  If you are not concerned about keeping the loco in original condition, substituting a modern Seuthe smoke unit may be worth considering.