Controlling Smoke Unit based on load

[Tom Roehl]

A member of our local large scale club has an engine that uses a linear potentiometer installed in the tenders coupler that controls the smoke unit so that the more drag on the coupler the more the smoke is generated. It creates a really effective look to the smoke generation as the engine starts up with a lot of cars. I know that the RailPro has the ability to monitor the current draw of the motors to speed match trains in a consist and I was wondering if this same ability would be able to control smoke units as well?

[G8B4Life]

There's no functionality in the LM that I know of that can do that, though I imagine Ring could program that ability in if enough people wanted it but I would guess that it depends on the brand of smoke generator as well. I would imagine that many smoke generators are simple on/off devices that it wouldn't work on.

- Tim

[Tom Roehl]

The control of the smoke unit was what initially got me thinking about it but there are a lot of other ways that it could be used now that I think about it. For example, what if the sound could be modified based on the load? An engine struggling under a large load can sound very different from one under light load. Think going uphill versus downhill for example.