TMCC SMOKE UNITS

This is the 6-38077 model, right? It has one of Lionel’s innumerable “semi-smart” smoke units that are meant to work with a TMCC board. I don’t think you can just drop in or swap over to an MTH unit and keep things like the chuffing function and boost - but let’s see if someone else chimes in with a suggestion. I thought about much the same swap a while back but didn’t find a way to do it.

I’ve worked on a number of smoke units of this kind and they’ve been commented on here in other threads. This one has an 8 Ohm resistor and should produce good smoke if the wadding is new, properly packed in the reservoir and soaked with smoke fluid, there’s proper voltage to the track and you’ve used the TMCC control to set smoke output to high. I suggest it’s better to see whether your existing smoke unit is properly serviced before contemplating a change in it.

Your siding short incident is weird!

If it already has a fan driven smoke unit, fix the Lionel one, they can be made to smoke just fine. 

If it's a mechanical smoke unit, my solution is the MTH smoke unit and my Super-Chuffer to control it.  You'll probably want the Chuff-Generator as well to get 4-chuffs/rev.