Seuthe Smoke Units ... Don't Understand Their Bad Reputation!

The reason for their bad Rap is:

• residual smoke fluid would dry up & clog the unit
• non-puffing smoke- great for a caldron or chimney though

Not to mention that they need to be filled every few minutes (during which I have already burned myself, on my WBB 4-6-0)

I don't like to generalize based on minimal experience, so all I can say is the one Williams steamer I have does not impress me at all when it comes to its smoke unit. Now some might say that Williams engines are priced as they are ( or used to be) because they have less of the "extras" found on higher priced engines, which I agree with and is one of the reasons I like them. But the several K-line Plymouth switchers I have (which were also very low priced engines) smoke up a storm, so I don't buy the extra expense argument. Again, I love Williams products, but I think there is room for improvment in this case.

I have several older brass engines with Seuthe smoke units. Because they don't have a fan, they smoke better and better as the speed goes up and the airflow improves. They do not project the smoke high in the air, so typically the smoke stream will be right along the top of the locomotive rather than a few scale feet up like a fan unit. If there are cross-currents from building ventilation, the smoke can go in some very strange directions, like down or sideways. Mine have a lot of variation; some are very prolific smokers and some not so much. As Michael mentions, they have to be filled often, which is a real nuisance at a museum open house when you are running for a couple of hours at a time. Usually I will run the smoke for an hour or so and then shut it off. 

Yeah, I don't have any visual problem with them, either. I've had some fail, and, of course, I've NEVER had a Lionel, MTH or Atlas unit fail. 

What? Oh, yeah; that last part is a late April Fool thing.

I think the smoke looks just fine; I'm just after the atmospheric (no pun) effect,

mostly - and I often turn smoke units off anyway.

Seuthe units seem made for diesels, but I guess the heat and plastic shells are a bad idea.

When I upgrade a Seuthe-unit loco to TMCC, I've had failures - the 18 volts is often the

culprit, I would presume, and I need to start putting a resistor in the leads I guess,

or change the tether from 4 to multi-wire to wire the unit to the new command boardbut by the time the TMCC upgrade is finished, I just am SO tired of the whole procedure...

However, I've had Seuthe units fail during Conventional running, also.

Some Seuthe units spit droplets of smoke fluid out the stack. They don't push the smoke high above the stack as fan-driven units do - no chuffing, either, as Southwest Hiawatha posted. Like him, I have seen some Seuthe units that barely smoke and others that put out lots of smoke. They can be particular. Some smoke fluids will clog them. But that varies, too.

The Seuthe unit in the 1994 MTH Premier Southern Ps-4 (1401) that I purchased from a Forumite works fine.

I guess they are OK if you want to run the engines at 120mph. My 2 Williams brass engines had next-to-no smoke right out of the box.

For me, it's no contest between almost any other type of smoke unit and the Seuthe unit, so I'll toss my vote in for them to maintain their bad reputation.