Hi MichaelB,
So I tried what you said for the # boards and mine stay the same brightness from the time you apply power to the track, run it and do a shutdown. I even turned on and off rule 17 to see if that would have an effect, it did not. I also have an update to my earlier comment about the center stack temperature. I stated the plastic was not getting hot around the center stack, well when running say 7 min. or more yes my center stack is getting hot and so is the plastic around it, assume the metal stack transferring heat to the surrounding plastic, amount of smoke output did not matter. So I will mostly run with the smoke off since Gensets are environmentally friendly anyway. Probably only turn on when demoing smoke.
