What makes a train smoke?

Question

Do electric trains still send off smoke?

Where does this come from?

Info on trains please!!

Answer 1

diesel fuel

Answer 2

peer pressure

one train sees all the cool trains hanging aound the pool hall smoking, they have all the best girls, and the next thing you know, another train is smoking

Answer 3

Most of the above answers, put together, pretty much give yu the direct answer.  However, one item which needs to be cleared up:  Even as blind as I am, I can ALWAYS tell when there's a GE in the consist.  No matter how new they are [and I have seen ES44's on the way to the paint shop], any GE will smoke under load.

Answer 4

A high conductor!

Answer 5

Electric trains don't smoke - unless the motors are overheating! I saw that happen on an electric train once. It's very rare.

Diesel trains tend to put out carbon particles which can be seen as thin (and sometimes not so thin) grey smoke above the exhaust. Modern, low-emission diesels are designed to avoid this.

Steam locomotives give off smoke in the exhaust but, the better quality coal, the less the smoke. Best quality stream coal burns at a high temperature and doesn't give off much in the way of particles.

Answer 6

electric trains = no smoke

normal trains run off coal which produces smoke.

Answer 7

most trains are electric but they use diesel engines to power the generator that powers the train so it's a diesel electric train

Answer 8

If there's smoke from an electric train, it means there is something wrong, like brakes getting hot or an electric motor about to fail or something.  They sure can smoke, but if they do it's time to stop and fix the problem!

Answer 9

Most of our new units burn much cleaner than the older ones do.When you see a new unit smoking bad it's in need of service.Plugged fuel filters is a common problem.Some older GE units have fuel delivery and turbo spool up issues which makes them belch flames and heavy smoke when you throttle them up.When you see a unit that smokes bad in an irregular manner it's doing what we call dropping it's load.The rpm's drop and then try to climb back up.When they do it chuff's out heavy black smoke.Straight electric trains don't smoke unless they're on fire.