O27 Engine

I'm with her.

How integrated?

Well, assuming the wires to and from the smoke unit and then on to the headlight are accessible, if you _could_ cut into them on either side of type smoke unit and run out to a single pole single throw switch, then when the switch was closed oit would offer a dead short past the smoke unit and on to the light - but minus the resistance of the heater in the smoke unit, the lamp might burn out. A way around that would be to measure the resistance across the smoke unit, and include a resistor of suitable size in the bypass jumper.

Then if they give you warranty grief about anything unrelated to that circuit, threaten to sue them for pollution and lung damage and soiled drapes and whatever else you can come up with. It's silly and cheap not to have a means to switch the smoke off, but of course, then you wouldn't be coming back to order more smoke oil. And you would never, EVER, use non- Lionel smoke "fluid" would you? Water, even? Riggghht, that's the ticket!

Enough that disconnecting that wire on the front truck disabled both the headlamp and the smoke generator. Essentially it looked like a single sub-system.

Good point. I hadn't considered that. When I do get around to doing this I'll be sure to check all the voltages first and bring in a resister if necessary. Thanks!

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If you look at the wiring carefully you'll see the bulb and heating element are wired in parallel, which means both are getting the same voltage. So adding a switch to turn the smoke unit off will not cause the lamp to burn out.

It's actually not that hard to add such a switch yourself. I do this fairly often for customers in my repair shop. Get a slide switch like the one used to control the E-Unit from your Authorized Lionel Service Center, or directly from Lionel. You can get the part number from the exploded diagrams on Lionel's web site.

Split the bare wire heating element lead on the 'hot' side (the one that runs to the wire bundle with the wire nut on it) so the two halves are roughly equal in length.

Solder a length (a foot or so should be enough) of stranded 22 gauge wire to each half of the split heating element lead. I generally use wires with black insulation to differentiate them from the blue and white E-unit leads they come out by. Make sure you use rosin core solder and a good flux.

Cover the joint and bare lead with heat shrink tubing. And if you bent the heater leads out a bit to work on them, put them back in roughly the original position when your done. Otherwise things may not fit back into the loco at reassembly time.

Look at the smoke unit from the side. You should now have one wire pointing up and towards the rear, and the other pointing down and to the front. Just feed the wire pointing towards the front around the smoke unit assembly.

Feed both wires into the chassis where the 'hot' lead normally goes in, and bring them out the other end where the E-unit is mounted.

Bring both wires around the E-unit following the same path as the blue and white E-unit wires.

Reassemble the smoke unit assembly, motor chassis, lead truck, and trailing truck back into the body. But don't screw down the E-unit switch yet.

Pull the E-unit switch away from the loco, extending as much of the blue and white wires as possible.

Now pull your new smoke unit control wires out, trim them to a length that is roughly the same as the E-unit switch wires, and strip about 1/4" of insulation from the end of each.

Solder one wire to each lug on the slide switch you obtained from Lionel or your ASC.

Put the E-unit switch into position on it's mounting pads and only install the screw towards the rear of the loco, but don't tighten it down completely yet.

Put the new switch in to the front of the E-unit switch, overlapping one end so the screw hole lines up with the front E-unit mounting pad.

Install the front screw so that it is holding both switches, and tighten it and the rear screw down.

You now have a smoke unit On/Off switch installed in your loco.

It's harder to describe the whole process than to actually do it. In fact the hardest part of the whole operation is reassembling the loco, which takes three hands normally anyway.

Just keep in mind the front end of the switch is 'floating' with no support, so you don't want to be too heavy handed when using it to turn the smoke on or off.

It doesn't help your situation much, but the good news is Lionel has finally seen the light. They've started adding a smoke On/Off switch at the factory in this years Christmas set, which is the same loco in different paint. They've even added a third mounting pad, so the front of the extra switch isn't floating in the air. Hopefully this will also start showing up in new production starter sets.

-- Len Head Rust Scraper KL&B Eastern Lines RR Museum