Model railroad smells

[vt_railroad_guy]

Sorry I missed that discussion. 
For me, the aromas of the MODEL trains are plenty!  Give me a freshly opened box of cork roadbed, some slowly decaying lichen and that unique smell of white glue diluted with a bit of dish soap, wrap it all up in a hazy overcast of ozone emitted by a bunch of noisy model locomotives, and I am off to paradise.

Some of my fondest memories involve the smells of sawdust, cigar smoke and National Beer...  along with the all of the above, as that was the clear evidence that the Old Man was laboring on the Christmas garden... his seasonal triumph of trains, terrain, and twinkling lights.

Lee

It's funny, but this is exactly what I was thinking when I read the thread title...scents of model railroading.  The smell of lumber, paint and basement are synonymous with model railroading for me. 

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Perhaps the solution isn't something that's super persistent but something that's very periodic. I have a candle called "industrial revolution" that was supposed to smell like coal smoke and warm grease. It smells nice but doesn't smell like those.

But I think that might just be the idea. Something you can easily control and only use sparingly.

[Mark5]

I thought this was a thread about crowded train shows.   

Likewise. 

Some smells are good, others ...

Mark

[Dave V]

For me some of the most nostalgic model-railroad specific smells are ones I will probably never smell again:

1)  Ambroid glue...brain cells be damned.
2)  Dio-Sol...we all know what happened there
3)  Fresh lichen out of a LifeLike bag...not really a part of a modern scenery palette. 

Dullcote still stinks as much as ever, though, and Solvaset still has that vinegar scent...so all is not completely lost.

[randgust]

Distinctive model railroad smells?

Easy.... and the one that drives me out of the room.... Floquil thinner/original paint.    I don't have very much of the stuff left, I hardly ever use it, but when I do...wow.  I've learned to put any of those projects to the end of the work session, do what I have to do, and just...get...out.   But until it cures, that's a lingering aroma that puts me back to the 70's in a hurry when that's all there was.

The other 'distinctive smell' is the distinct odor of a fire-ring smokefest coming out of a Minitrix F-unit (and others) when the commutator slots filled with conductive stuff mixed with lubrication and burned out like a car cigarette lighter.   It wasn't uncommon to pick up a locomotive and do a sniff test.   Today's modelers have no appreciation of just how hot a lot of early N scale diesels ran, certainly hot enough to ignite things and create smoke.    If you had a long operating session, between the ozone and the occasional burst of commutator smoke, yeah, memorable odor.    I've NEVER had an Atlas or Kato or about anybody else's current motor erupt like that.

[wm3798]

Nothing gets hotter than an old Rapido cast iron FA-2.  They were wise to encapsulate that thermonuclear reactor in 6' of solid heat sink...  When mine is running across the room, it quickly fills the air with the smells of hot N scale history.

One day I'll endeavor to repower one with something less volatile, but until then, the goal remains to run one long enough to blister the paint and see the metal actually glow hot red.  Then maybe I can beat it into a B-unit.

Shouldn't take more than a half an hour.

Lee

[Maletrain]

Swimming back upstream against the thread drift, I think the problem with odors is the  inability to scale them with the scene.  If you have a railroad that runs between a saw mill and a pig farm, how do we smell just the sawdust when near the mill and just the pigs when near the farm?

Other than having a really complicated air handling system for the train room, all I can think of is some sort of sniffable items that are impregnated with the  desired smells sitting near the parts of the layout where those smells are appropriate.  Not as automatic as walking around and automatically getting the smells without trying, but sniffing a pad is probably less of a stretch than doing the electrical manipulations for walk-around throttle control with DC.

A hybrid approach might be to have the smells come out as puffs in the right locales when somebody pushes a local button at each one, plus a rather strong fan that sucks through the ceiling and exhausts  to the outside.  That would keep the smells reasonably local and would allow individual people to choose to push or not push the buttons.  And, the smells would not linger past the sensory saturation stage.

[Nato]

                          There is really only one real Toy Train smell. Anyone who grew up with Lionel , Marx , or American Flyer trains, That wonderful Ozone hot motor smell after running your train/trains for several hours. Forget all the Pastoolie (did I spell it right) Oils.             Nate Goodman. (Nato).   

[DKS]

                          There is really only one real Toy Train smell. Anyone who grew up with Lionel , Marx , or American Flyer trains, That wonderful Ozone hot motor smell after running your train/trains for several hours. Forget all the Pastoolie (did I spell it right) Oils.             Nate Goodman. (Nato).   

Ah, but N Scalers may fondly recall the smell of a Postage Stamp Trains box being opened for the first time...

[peteski]

I have a candle called "industrial revolution" that was supposed to smell like coal smoke and warm grease. It smells nice but doesn't smell like those.

If it smalls "nice" then it definitely doesn't smell like coal and warm grease!  Those smells, while synonymous with railroads, are not all that "nice".  Smell of lilly-of-the-valley is nice. 

[peteski]

Dullcote still stinks as much as ever, though, and Solvaset still has that vinegar scent...so all is not completely lost.

I agree about Dullcote (stench that is strangely appealing, in very small doses.  But Solvaset smells like alcohol, not vinegar. Microscale MicroSet and Solvaset both have an alcohol smell. You are likely thinking of Microscale MicroSol (which contains acetic acid). 

[aikorob]

Dirty words in our house at the moment. We picked-up a package of store-brand "maple syrup-flavored bacon" last week 'cuz it was all they had left. Cooked it up for breakfast - I think it was Tuesday - it was OK-ish, maybe a slight aftertaste. However, five days later I can still smell the very chemical-ish "maple" fragrance in the house. Even after cleaning/sanitizing the kitchen three or four times. The stench aroma is friggin' everywhere.

Lesson here is the oil-based synthesized fragrances can permeate fabrics and living-area foams, hanging on for days and days and days and days... . So be careful what you wish for, you may get it.

same thing here----Mrs. thought she did good by scoring bacon.............NEVER AGAIN
the only that should be "maple syrup flavored"  is...............maple syrup (and maybe your Canadian girlfriend) 

[Iain]

If you've ever been out to the Grand Canyon railroad with 4960 post-conversion to biofuel, you could do just as well with a couple McDonalds french-fry containers (used) in the room.   The joke 'does it really smell like french fries?' is absolutely true.

Sawmills have a very distinctive odor - particularly hardwood in the northeast that is cutting Red Oak.   It's distinctive and not at all unpleasant.   I've always wanted to experiment with a bucket of that sawdust under the Hickory Valley when I take it to train shows and see if I get a reaction.

On the other hand...the tannery....

Boat shops (where they build wood boats, not plastic) smell fantastic.

[chicken45]

I would buy a CRHS Annual Rail B-Que Newport scented candle.

It could smell like grass, diesel, roast beef, and white nationalism!

[coldriver]

@Dave V what specific product brand/flavor do you use for your pine scents?  I've tried several things but haven't really been satisfied with the aromas compared to what I remember watching a loaded woodchip train roll through Northern Idaho.