Steam...

[Tom]

Two other things about smoke, if you DO have a smoke unit in the engine you eventually choose, it is kind of a "use it or lose it" proposition. Basically it is an electrically operated burner, so if you just add smoke sporadically, you run the risk of burning up the smoke unit. In other words, you have to keep oil in it and keep using the smoke unit or risk losing it for good. Not a bad thing if you decide a smoke unit is for you, just a heads up.

Also, I almost forgot, Alicia found scented smoke fluid on E-bay a while back. I have an MTH O Scale DDA40X Centennial and though I don't model O Scale (I bought it to sit on my fireplace mantel as I have a thing for a certain Centennial) and of course, the redneck in me HAD to see and hear it run just once. On the advice of a Youtube video, I used lamp oil for the smoke units in it (it has 2 engines and 2 smoke units), and boy was THAT a mistake! I smoked us out of our house. My neighbor still gives me wierd looks when I see her outside. Alicia had looked into getting a loop of Lionel 3 rail roadbed track and a few MTH and Atlas O cars to run that monster around the Christmas tree, and of course, she HAD to have "baking cookies" scented smoke fluid. hock: There were all sorts of scents, candy cane, baking bread, baking cookies, oil fired steam engine scent, coal fired steamer scent, pine tree scent (I know, under a Christmas tree?!), diesel smoke scent, and a few others I can't remember. She found them on E-bay and I just looked and saw a few the other day as well. We ended up not doing the O Scale loop for the Centennial because she requires at LEAST a 72" (?!) MINIMUM radius curve to operate on. That makes for a 12' circle around the Christmas tree. Compared to my On30 loop around the tree, that's like killing flies with a sledge hammer, a little overkill. Not to mention we were looking at spending over $700 for what we wanted train and track wise and that was for just a simple circle, so we decided to go On30. Alicia wants me to add Tsunamis and smoke units to her two On30 2-6-0's (she STILL wants a smoking engine that smells like baking cookies!), but *I* am not going to attempt it.