Hello all! I am writing in regards to my Lionel #8403 Chessie System steam locomotive. It is the blue engine with tender. I have several questions. 1: When were these originally sold? The underside of the boiler says Copyright 1983, is this the year production began? 2: Is this considered an MPC era production? 3: The main reason for writing, the smoke unit in this engine was completely melted out and I could not get a part number off of it. I bought a similar looking unit off ebay, brand new, but this one had an electrical contact that opened and closed with the air piston. The original did not. Now, my issue is that there just isn't much smoke coming out of the unit. If you put the loco in neutral, and full power the throttle, then put the loco in motion, there are 3-4 good puffs of smoke. It seems that the amount of power to the smoke unit is not enough to produce good smoke while running slow enough to not derail. Do smoke units, even though they look the same, have different power requirements? I'm only getting very faint whisps of smoke while in motion. I am using Lionel smoke fluid.

Also, does anyone know what the part number would be for this engine? I want to find exploded diagrams, but no where have I looked have I been able to look up diagrams using the engine number, 8403.


 Thanks for all your help!
  C.J.