I am just getting back into the hobby after a several year absence. I had a little kid layout when I was younger, a table with some nailed down track. But now I want to do it properly.
Anyway, I have a pressing question. I have purchased the Spectrum 4-6-2 pacific and two Bachman 2-6-0 moguls with smoke. I have seen some comments that certain smoke units can cause melt damage to the loco's stack. I DO NOT want to run my engines with smoke, seeing the oily mess it has made of some very nice looking loco's. Will this endanger my moguls? How easy is it to open up the engine and disconnect the smoke unit? Thank you for your time.
on the left of this page you'll see a tab called 'product reference, open it and it will show 4 items, 1 of which is diagrams. Open that and it will list all the diagrams for the Bachmann engines. the mogul is listed in the standard line about half way down.
I don't have any Moguls, but I have a Prairie and 4 0-6-0s and didn't ever use the smoke fluid and nothing ever happened to them. Maybe if you are running them for extended periods of time, but with normal running they should be ok. Also, on youtube Bachmann has a video on how to remove the the shell of the 0-6-0/2-6-0/2-6-2 for other purposes, but if you follow those instructions it shouldn't be any trouble.
It is in this video, It starts talking about what you need at around 2 minutes and 20 seconds into the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtW8Gx_WxL4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtW8Gx_WxL4)
Thank you very much. The video was very useful. It looks very easy to open up the loco so I think I'll remove the smoke unit to be on the safe side.
I've just finished removing the smoke unit from both of my moguls and am looking forward to years of worry free service. I must say it was a quick, easy and trouble free process and I'd like to thank Bachman for this well built and wonderfully simple little engine.