One of the younger members of our club parked an MTH locomotive in the MTH two stall engine house with the smoker on. The girders on the engine house caught fire and melted and a hole was melted in the roof of the engine house. I wasn't there at the time but I was told that the roof actually caught fire. I don't have photos at this time but I will be going there tomorrow and I will post them later. I turned the smoker on the loco on yesterday and there was no heat coming out of there, at least none that I could feel. I held my hand over the smokestack for a while and it didn't even feel warm. My understanding was that MTH smoke fluid smokes at a lower temperature and that this shouldn't be possible. I was wondering if anyone has had a similar experience or has heard of something like this happening?
Here are the photos: The top surface of the Roof One thing that we found out is that MTH smoke fluid is flammabe. Tried setting some on fire outside the building and it ignited pretty violently and continued to burn for a while.
In the real world they usually had smoke jacks (smokestacks) at one or both ends of the locomotive stalls to vent the exhaust. They would spot the locomotive stack directly under them so they could draw off the smoke and heat. When you folks rebuild the roof on the engine house you need to add these features. Maybe with a tiny electric fan even.
Yes, but I wouldn't remove all traces of the fire. It's a good story for future members. Maybe make the roof an obvious patch.
Unfortunately, this was supposed to be the diesel house. We didnt bother with stacks because of that. In the first photo, you can see the roundhouse and you can see that it does have stacks. In fact it even has hoods under each stack. We already considered Flash's idea. We were planning to have repair crew on the roof, repairing the hole.
I would guess that the combustion process within that engine is incomplete. (Possibly the same for any others?) Somehow, residue collected above the stack, and then ignited- A flash fire. Scary stuff! Sounds like the group needs to warn everyone about this potential danger. Boxcab E50
I posted the same thing in the "O gauge Railroading" forum and several members there reported similar experiences. A couple of them said that when it ignites, the stack is like a butane torch. Some members said this happened with Lionel engines as well as other brands including MTH. Part of the problem seems to be that today's packs put out a much higher voltage than the older packs. The MTH pack that we are using is capable of 18 volts and significant amounts of current. Generally this wouldn't be a problem but in a club situation where a loco is run for significant amounts of time before being parked, this appears to be more common. We had a bunch of kids in that morning and that particular engine had been run for about an hour before it was parked. It was then parked in neutral with the power on so it would continue smoking. Further more, it was parked with the smokestack inside the engine house (basically a confined space without much air movement) and left there for an extended period of time. All our roundhouse tracks and our engine house tracks have switches on them so engines can be shut off when parked. However, for them to be effective, the switches must be used.
Yikes! This seems like a comsumer warning should be posted from the power supply, smoke and engine people. Otherwise, someone could find themselves without a layout and worse. I hope that somehow those manufacturers have been made aware? :tb-sad: Boxcab E50
Apparently at least some manufacturers are aware of the possibility. One member in the O Gauge Railroading forum posted this: I shudder to think what would happen if this loco had been under a Christmas tree when this happened. I guess we just have to be more aware of what we are doing and not let our trains run unattended.
