Well, my 2003 Dodge Ram 1500 blower for the heat started to make some noise the other day. Sounded like it was all angry and upset at me. Oh dear, what do I do? LOL
I mean really......
MTH and Lionel both have really awesome smoke systems, but failure is always in the cards no matter what one does. I run smoke on my AC6000, but not on my SD70Ace. The reason? I guess I am waiting to see when the motor might go on the AC6000. LOL
Truthfully, it never will as I hardly use any of these locomotives nearly as much as some do theirs on their layouts. I run my loco's fairly easy and only for a few turns around my small layout.
In reality, as far as diesels are concerned and especially modern ones, smoke is really not necessary and actually it does look wrong. Now on steam locomotives, it is an absolute must to have smoke because a steam locomotive without smoke just doesn't look or feel right. So, of course the members that run their steam locomotives with smoke all the time are more likely to encounter a burned out motor versus those that do not use the smoke feature.
"failure is not an option"
Pete