Baldwin 2-6-2 for NA, W in 1901

[low_grade]

This is what I settled on for the engine to fill the gap between the Ten Wheeler and the Atlantic.

The Sante Fe 1010 was a Baldwin 2-6-2 used on the record breaking Scott Special. From what I can gather, the 2-6-2 configuration isn't the most stable or pleasant for passengers, which is why most later engines adopted either 4-4-2 or 4-6-2 for the same type of service.

So, this train is fast, with a top speed of 86 mph, and it can pull long trains fairly well, and doesn't grind to a complete halt when it hits a modest grade. Its acceleration is only Average, and its reliability is below average.

Baldwin shipped a lot of these to New Zealand and other parts, so I'm making it available to the world as well as to North America.

For the skin I used the Class 500, which only has European availability, in order to minimize confusion, though the Class 500 is a 4-6-0.

For performance comparison, the Eight Wheeler remains a better train for pulling short trains on flat track, and the Shay is probably better for tough grades except it's so ****** slow, but in all other situations, the Baldwin 2-6-2 is a pretty clear improvement over its predecessors. The P8 is a comparable contemporary in the medium grades and is superior in tough grades, though it only has European availability. The 2-D-2 in 1904 will be a little better at medium grades and clearly better at tough grades. Europe's Class 500 will be superior to the Baldwin 2-6-2 in every application in 1905, but it's really not fair to compare any locomotive to that ridiculously out of class engine. In the American market, the Mastodon in 1907 will be clearly superior in medium and tough grades (if you didn't want to go electric in 1904) and probably even for very long trains in flat grades, the Atlantic in 1910 will be noticeably better for pulling longer trains for short runs in the flats (while the Eight Wheeler remains superior for shorter trains), and the Pacific in 1914 will be clearly better pulling long trains in the flats in every application, and with that the Baldwin 2-6-2 will become obsolete.

This train is a little above the curve, I must admit, that you would expect to see in performance improvements. Overall it is clearly better than its predecessors, but except for the Class 500 and then the H10 and the A1, improvements beyond the Baldwin 2-6-2 aren't as dramatic as its improvement over the Ten Wheeler. Still, I think it's a fairly balanced engine and a good addition to the game.

Again, someday perhaps I'll reskin this, but I just opened a dds file in Gimp for the Campbell reskin of the Baldwin 0-6-0 and boy was it a jumbled mess of pieces and parts. This may take longer even than I was afraid... Seriously, who makes their own skins? Those guys must be digital geniuses!

[Wolverine@MSU]

Again, someday perhaps I'll reskin this, but I just opened a dds file in Gimp for the Campbell reskin of the Baldwin 0-6-0 and boy was it a jumbled mess of pieces and parts. This may take longer even than I was afraid... Seriously, who makes their own skins? Those guys must be digital geniuses!

Could you just use the CtoC reskinning package? Granted, it isn't as powerful as digging into the DDS files and repainting them, but you could at least recolor the whole thing.

[WPandP]

CtoC reskinning tool just applies a skin that you've image-edited to a given model; you still have to figure out which part is which and modify it in GIMP or Photoshop, and know more or less what you're doing.

Step one in reskinning is to map out elements in the skin to the model, so you know what you're painting. This can be trial-and error; I've resorted to doing a temporary skin in which I paint crazy neon colors over the various parts (different colors for each part, and usually I do color gradients rather than solid so I can see that the pink edge is forward and the blue edge is back, for instance), then load that in-game and study the model so that you can determine which part is the smokestack, etc. Some will be obvious - the sides of the cab, for instance, or any part with a recognizable feature. But the small ones, for various pipes and domes etc., can be tough to figure out, especially on a steam engine. I guess Step Zero would be to extract the components you're gonna be editing; I kinda assumed you already have all those assets set out and ready to go.

Step two is the actual editing, making one skin file that looks nice and is called "[filename]_A.tga" (I do all my skins as TGAs, at least until they are fully and completely done). Keep checking your work by loading the model in-game; it helps to create a small scenario with your model already placed on the track, so you just save that scenario, and between iterations you just reload the scenario to examine the model.

Step three is the creation of reductions. Once you have an A skin that works, you need to reduce its size in pixels by half then save again as B, and do that again and save as C, etc. As mentioned previously, at each of these reductions you need to clean up the alpha channel before saving, or else you'll get the glowing edges phenomenon.

Step four would be conversion to DDS files if you prefer that format (I tend to leave mine as TGA since they are more readily edited by others, should someone want to elaborate on my skins), and do whatever you need to do to package it all (create a PK4 file, write a Readme, ZIP it all up, upload to a hosting website, etc.)

[WPandP]

Also, I should point out that a modded Prairie 2-6-2 has already been created, a long time back, and can be downloaded here. It could use a fresh skin of its own, but otherwise is fully functional and has the right wheel arrangement. Have you examined it? How do your stats compare?

[low_grade]

I thought I'd downloaded all the engines available in the extras section, and I don't have the Prairie 2-6-2. I'll check this forum's topics to see if I've missed some engines that never got posted over on the other side of the site.

Good tips for editing, I'll get to work on it. Completely altering wheel arrangements seems like a very different task than simply recoloring the main skin file like I'll be doing for the Campbell 4-4-0 and the Hercules 0-6-0. I've seen from other posts that some of you know how to do this, and that it involves the .3dp files, but I don't see any way to edit those, they look from internet searches like some kind of audio file. I imagine it might require hex editing, since those files are very small, but without a guide of some sort like Pjay's notes I'm afraid I'd be up a creek and forgot my paddles.

Just a note on the LCOspec file, where it includes the ?2 listing that has something to do with grade climbing, that's really more of a power constant. It boosts both grade climbing and car pulling. To increase just grade climbing, you need to go into the CAR file and drop the weight of the engine (and it might help to drop the weight of the tender as well.) From this discovery, I wonder if it would be a good idea (if not entirely accurate) to drop the weights of the Big Boy and Challenger so that they really are mountain champions. Currently they're not really attractive engines compared with the P2 and V-2 and all those nice new N&W engines somebody invented. The N&W Class J is fantastic pulling long trains through medium grades, I can't help but notice!

Also, I heard someone mention that there's a limit to the number of engines the game can handle. Anybody know what that limit is? And how it's checked? If I really go crazy and end up modding 50 engines or more and overload the game, there might be a workaround if I know how the limit works, like creating two Engine Data folders, one for early games, one for late games, with some overlap in the middle, and just swap out the folders depending on the scenario I want to play. But maybe I'd have to do this with the UserExtraContent folder as well if the PK4s overload the game, too.

[low_grade]

Ah, I see that bombardier removed the Prairie from the 1.06 loco pack, so if you've got it on your computer, you'll have to post it here for me to compare it.

[low_grade]

Okay, pulled the Prairie out of the locopak that I never installed because I went right to 1.06 so didn't think I needed it. It looks a lot like the Mastodon, but I suppose I could use it as a better base skin for the Baldwin 2-6-2.

Here's how they compare: the Prairie sucks, the Baldwin is pretty good. No, really. The top speed on the Prairie, 60mph, on the Baldwin, 86mph. 2-6-2s from this time period could average 60mph or better on a run, so I don't understand the Prairie's top speed figure. Looks like in most American engine designs (apart from the eight wheeler) Poptop and others try to keep top speed down very low, below both historical figures and European contemporaries in the game. Not sure why this is.

Apart from top speed, here's the breakdown with Prairie listed first, Baldwin second:
Cost: $100K/$120K
Maintenance: $11K/$16K
Fuel Economy: Above Average / Average
Acceleration: Average / Average
Reliability: Above Average / Below Average
Passenger Appeal: Acceptable / Acceptable

and my own two statistics:
Car Pulling: 45% / 48%
Grade Climbing: 17% / 21%

Now after reading through that post which led me to the Prairie, I noticed that somebody thought the Shay wasn't a practical engine in the game as it was in the real world, and that there needed to be an American engine or two in the 1880's-90's which can perform the task of mountain hauling. I tend to agree with that. It's not really a good sign that the Baldwin, intended to be an upgrade of the Ten Wheeler, ended up also being the best train in the mid grades as well. So I don't think I need to invent any new engines, but I do think that the Mogul and the Camelback could use some tweaking. They both could have their power constants increased a little to make them better at hauling long trains and at climbing grades, and their weights might need to be dropped slightly, too, to make them still better at grades. I'll try it out and run the results through my spreadsheet to see if they can be made effective.

[WPandP]

I was the one that put together the N&W engines; I'm a model railroader with N&W blood in my veins. The first couple, Bombardiere helped me by providing the model and I did the skin, plus we together figured out the stats. One reason why the J is so stellar is that we tried to model its performance on real-world capabilities, with little regard to how it compares to the rest of the engines in the game. It stands out, because as you've seen all the game's engines are somewhat under-rated compared to what they should be. Perhaps this is because they imposed the 8-car train limit early on, and had to scale things down so that such a short train was actually a burden to most engines, and the Big Boy actually had a reason for existence.

Anyways, the J was my first, and it was just a skin that turned into a stand-alone engine with Bomber's help; the Y was next, and there's an old thread here wherein he and I developed that. The A was done on my own, and was how I taught myself to hex-edit the 3DP files; it's tedious but certainly possible. The SD40's came next, a simpler 3DP hex edit but it's where I learned the simple trick to flipping a unit to face backwards.

Hunt for them, and there's threads on all of these here. You too can learn to edit 3DP's! But I suggest you get a firm grasp on skinning first.

[low_grade]

Alright, here's the Baldwin with the Prairie skin, much better then the Class 500. Bigger file since whoever made the Prairie skin didn't feel like converting the TGAs to dds format, and neither did I.

[low_grade]

Darnit. Now that substituted the Prairie skin for the Class 500 skin, my game gives me an error in 3dp file heading notice and crashes. Why would the skin work fine for the Prairie but not when I put it on the Baldwin? I got all the names right, no typos, so I'm stumped. Guess I have to go back to the Class 500 skin for now. If anybody wants to grab that last skin and see what's going wrong, feel free.

[low_grade]

Alright, got the prairie skin to work, so now the Baldwin 2-6-2 is actually a 2-6-2, not a 4-6-0. Why didn't I just keep it as the prairie with modded stats? I don't know that would've made too much sense I guess. The Baldwin has W availability which is an inarguable historical fact, so I suppose it did make a difference.

Also, if you've been following my various diatribes on modding everything from A to Z, you won't be surprised to see I've included a few other mods here, too. Backup your files first in case you want to revert, but I think you'll be happy with the end results here.

First you have the Atlantic. Increased the top speed to 88, that was all it needed. When following the curve from Eight Wheeler to A1, the Atlantic was a serious dip in the role of hauling short to medium length trains in the flats, and now the curve is more of a nice smooth straight line.

Next you have the Pacific. Dropped price to $110K and maintenance to $18K/yr and improved reliability to Average. Now the H10 doesn't steal its business hauling long trains in the flats.

Last you have the Shinkansen. Increased top speed to 160 but messed with both power constants and increased weight a little bit so it's more like the Eight Wheeler: Awesome at hauling short and medium trains in the flats and even long trains of express, mediocre to downright crappy at everything else.

That's right, I said BOTH power constants. In working on the Shinkansen I finally realized that the note in the LCOspec file, though it was only next to the float labeled ?2, said that both ?1 and ?2 have something to do with grade climbing, and for the record, I figured out what it was. ?2 is a linear proportionality. Boost or drop it and you loose power directly proportional to the number of cars and the grade, which is what we call linear. ?1 is an exponential proportionality. A high figure here will push the top speed all the way out to 5, 6, 7, or even all 8 cars, with a steep drop off after that (unless ?2 is also high), and will do the same for 1 car at 2%, 4%, and even 6% grades. A low figure here will collapse the speed down to almost nothing beyond 1 car at 0% grade.

Well, here you go, enjoy!