Hornby R392 county of Bedford smoke unit

[PWG1707821017]

I have a very tidy R392 County of Bedford loco with steam function. I have owned it for a couple of years, it has stopped producing smoke. It has always has plenty of correct smoke oil and I do remember about 6 months ago the engine let out a “pop” noise but still produced smoke.The smoke unit has now packed up, the loco otherwise is a great runner. Any ideas for a repair ? Hornby do not carry spares for this more modern smoke unit. I describe it as a clear plastic tube with fuse type wires that should heat up and produce smoke through the oil. Any Help please.

[Chrissaf]

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[ColinB]

I had several locos with this unit in. Hornby did a range of 4-4-0 locos with them in. I took all of mine out as I found it was distorting the body. There is a piece of tin foil that is supposed to stop this but on one of them it had fell out making the distortion worse, even on the ones where there was tin foil they had distorted a little. The popping I don't think is anything to worry about mine were always doing that when they worked properly. I damaged one of mine when I knocked the element with the end of the syringe trying to fill it. They do come up on EBay sometimes or you could try rewinding it. I did fit one of them to an old Duchess, driving it with a DCC function (I used a Zimo decoder) and it did work really well although you still got all the mess and filling was an issue.