I see a fella inquired in the latest GR issue re cheap substitutes for smoke fluid. Model smoke fluid is only paraffin oil which you can buy in bulk from your drugstore (chemist shop). It’s sold to give to kids and adults to relieve constipation but is identical to the commercial expensive smoke oil you pay ludicrous amounts for at the hobby shop.
Hope this saves everyone a bunch of $$$$
I looked up “paraffin oil” on Wiki, and found that it has many meanings, here in the US of A. If you get it at the drug store (chemists), it is called mineral oil. If you get paraffin oil at the hardware store, its called kerosene. I suspect that Phil is talking about mineral oil.
Steve, exactly. You blokes also call it lamp oil. It all smokes the same
I wonder what Aristocraft added to their mineral oil to make it so special, or was that just marketing?
Whoa, I used lamp oil in My Bachmann Shay. It smoked real nice, right up until it caught on fire. Fortunately there wasn’t enough airflow inside the Shay to sustain the fire, and only the bottom part of the stack got partly melted and burned. The stack looks fine on the outside, but it now wages back and forth as the Shay goes down the tracks. Yea, enough of the plastic got melted and burned that it no longer fits snug in the smoke-box. And the lamp oil was marked as 99% paraffin.
I have about 5 brands of smoke oil, all of them seem to be somewhat different from straight paraffin oil and from kerosene, both of which I also own and use.
I suspect that these “smoke oils” have a bit more solvent in them than paraffin oil and less than straight kerosene.
Greg
Hi:
If my memory hasn’t gone totally wacky, i recall discovering that propylene glycol is/was a major component of magic smoke sold by Dept56.
Well I go to the local drug store and buy a pint of Propylene Glycol for about $12 and it is what came with my Mr Christmas musical steam loco. It’s also used for Humidor’s It works great and last a long time. Later RJD