HM154: Evening Star with ZIMO digital sound in ‘OO’ 

Smoke generators are rarely convincing in OO gauge, and more often than not damage the loco body over time. Sadly a risk not really justified in most cases.

In 2009/2010 I have bought a secondhand split from a train pack Hornby LMS Duchess of Devonshire Coronation class loco that I hard wired with a DCC décoder and then added a Seuthe smoke unit. There was some modification required to fit this into the chimney but I had to ensure that the metal parts of the smoke unit did not touch the plastic of the body. When the loco was running, it was possible to control the smoke unit via a function key on the controller and it did look good when it was “steaming” but I accept it was nothing like the density of smoke seen on the prototype and to be honest I was aware of the unit’s limitations. I did observe that the smoke unit seemed to operate at a really high temperature and if the chamber was overfilled with smoke oil, hot vapour would be spat out over the top of the loco and so it was crucial to only add enough and to turn the unit off when the loco was out of sight in a tunnel or at a halt. The old Triang and Hornby smoke units in my father’s Winston Churchill, Britannia and B12 locos were always used when running as a child and offered immense play value. There was an article in an old Model Rail magazine from the late 1990’s that suggested using a smoke generator in a steam MPD or beside the track on an analogue layout (at the exit of a tunnel for example) that could provide an illusion of steam being produced if you didn’t want to fit a smoke unit in every loco. Apologies for the lengthy reply....