I found quite a cheap way to make the houses on my layout come to life with smoking chimneys. I used 3, 4 and 5mm plastic pipe, a cheap Chinese aquarium air pump and an e-cigarette from Poundland. There are 6 chimneys that smoke. Two are on the station in the foreground, one on each of the shop/apartment blocks behind, one in the pub next door and one at the back in the goods depot office. I changed all the flimsy paper rolled chimneys with pieces of pipe, painted appropriately on all the converted buildings. This has had the added advantage of stronger chimney pots which cannot be accidently knocked off :)
Sunday 24 September 2017
Smoking Chimneys On My N Gauge Model Railway
I found quite a cheap way to make the houses on my layout come to life with smoking chimneys. I used 3, 4 and 5mm plastic pipe, a cheap Chinese aquarium air pump and an e-cigarette from Poundland. There are 6 chimneys that smoke. Two are on the station in the foreground, one on each of the shop/apartment blocks behind, one in the pub next door and one at the back in the goods depot office. I changed all the flimsy paper rolled chimneys with pieces of pipe, painted appropriately on all the converted buildings. This has had the added advantage of stronger chimney pots which cannot be accidently knocked off :)
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can i ask how do you get the smoke in to the pump ????
ReplyDeletei have just got your cd and it is very good i work as a volunteer at crewe heritage centre i look after the 2 n gauge sets
Hi Shane,
DeleteThe pump actually blows air through the e-cigarette from the back of it (the e-cig came as just a vapour chamber and mouth piece for £1, the battery which I didn't need, is sold separately). I connected a piece of pipe to it using hot glue as a seal with wires included to energise the chamber. When I turn the pump on this blows air through the e-cig and then onto all the pipes. I then have a seperate switch to send current to the e-cig to create the vapour.
All my pipes are then connected with T joints to give one single pipe to connect to the end of the mouth piece. The air output from the pump is very, very small but surprisingly enough to blow vapour through all the pipes. I did quite a few tests before actually making and fitting the new chimney tops to my layout.
You do get a little moisture build up in the pipes, so I don't keep it going for too long.
The cheap £1 e-liquid by the same maker as the e-cig works well. I use the nice 'healthy' 16mg of nicotine one! You can get e-liquid with zero nicotine but I'm not sure you would get away with it on a public layout :)