Smoke Unit with TTS Steamers

[Kaustav]

Hello everyone,

I am planning to move to Hornby and British model railroading (as of now I am modeling N scale American), and I definitely would like to start with Hornby TTS locos. However, moving from N to OO, along with sound, I also definitely want to have smoke. Has anyone ever installed a smoke unit with any of the TTS locos? are these locos configured to take in a smoke unit without much of an hassle, or does it need a lot of rework to add smoke to these locos?

 

Any information will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Kaustav 

[96RAF]

Fitting a smoke unit to a TTS steamer is as much work as you would expect to do to any 00 steamer Kaustav but noting that the spare F18 Aux function on TTS decoders is limited to 100ma so you may need to be thinking about powering your smoke unit via a relay rather than by direct decoder current.

There has been discussion on the forum of using both F0 (directional lights) and Aux function outputs together to power smoke units and it is worth searching the forum for this additional information.

[Kaustav]

Fitting a smoke unit to a TTS steamer is as much work as you would expect to do to any 00 steamer Kaustav but noting that the spare F18 Aux function on TTS decoders is limited to 100ma so you may need to be thinking about powering your smoke unit via a relay rather than by direct decoder current.

There has been discussion on the forum of using both F0 (directional lights) and Aux function outputs together to power smoke units and it is worth searching the forum for this additional information.

Thanks for the info. I will look around.

The immediate question is, do the TTS steamers have the space to take the smoke generator plus the additional relay?

Thanks,

Kaustav

[Rog RJ]

Be very careful.  Apart from the electrical power requirements you can easily melt the chimney and surrounding plastic with the heat generated by the smoke unit.

[Rog RJ]

Sorry, double post.

[Yelrow]

Is this from personal experience, Rog, do you have a chimneyless loco. I have a triang one that smokes, but  modern units appear a lot different. john

[Rog RJ]

I've seen melted chimneys but not had it happen myself as I don't have, and wouldn't use smaoke generators.  The old Triang sychrosmoke units were pretty good but the modern ones just don't look right to me and can result in melting bodies, at least on some models.

[PJ_model_trains]

I think Kaustav hit the nail on the head. Is there room!

Secondly if there is room how much room, the smaller the space I would then be more concerned of the heat problems.

Having said that, these are just my thoughts, I don't have steam, but it does seem the missing element in realism for steam locos.

[dynax]

 peters spares stock smoke units, some of them can be powered from as little as 80ma, and some are designed for plastic bodies, Mike.

[Blackbird]

Hi Kaustav, I have fitted smoke units to many of my DCC loco, using Seuthe units. From my experience I have found that the full output from the decoder (16v) is a little high for a reasonable 'smoke' output. These units were designed for a variable power input matching DC speed control., where max power isn't aways on. I've found that fitting a 100 ohm, 1/4 watt resistor, in series gives adequate 'smoke' output, reducing the current requirement of the aux decoder output. I would recommend the use of the Seuthe 22 model, (10-16V, 120mA) as it has a slimmer  insulated chimney giving clearance in the plastic loco body's chimney. Alternatively a type 23, is rated at 70mA (no resistor required) at a voltage range of 16-22V. I would not recomend the 100 model (often supplied) as, although it is a neat fit to many chimney stacks, it is not insulated.

 Suethe have over 20 types of smoke generators available, many shapes and sizes to suit many voltage and current requirements. Check out their web site.

Regards, Bruce.