BLI's smoke generators are quite good, not as good as the MTH versions. In fact, those two entities fought a legal battle over theft of patented technology. MTH sued BLI, and they lost. BLI won the battle, but not the battle for 'best smoke generators'. My opinion, of course.
None of the HO smoke generators is very realistic. In BLI's case, they will quickly burn out the element if you run them dry, or if you don't turn them off as soon as you start to set CV configurations in the decoder when you first place the locomotive on powered rails. There's a switch under the cab floor to turn it off. If you get one, invert the loco, turn off the smoke, and then start to set address and the motive characteristics in CV's 2-6. You'll also want to reduce Master Volume.
Note: the Paragon series of decoders won't do anything when you power up the rails under them. It will be when you begin to dial in speed steps on hour throttle that it will begin to emit sound and to move. Don't get fooled!!