Katzhagen - News
Old brooms still sweep clean...
The Aristocraft smoke generators installed in the V200 about 15 years ago seemed to have had their best days behind them. During operation in the late summer of 2025 there were only occasional traces of an exhaust plume. A test showed that the fans were only turning reluctantly and the heating resistors were only giving off a small amount of heat. Massoth's pulsed evaporators were procured for analogue operation - a bad purchase.
It turned out that the Massoth evaporators only gave off reasonable plumes of smoke from a track voltage of around 9V - after the locomotive had already traveled several meters after starting to move. Smoke output is quite reasonable when the loco accelerates but there is hardly anything to be seen afterwards. Certainly prototypical, but for EUR 90 per exhaust you actually want to see something...
So it was back to the Aristocraft evaporators. The fan motors were flushed with DeoxIT D5 and the heating resistors were replaced. Furthermore, a 12V lithium-ion battery was installed to supply the evaporators, which is switched on via a relay at about 5.5V track voltage (i.e. still in the stand).
A picture is worth a thousand words...
