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Mogul and Camelback tweaks

Creating and Editing Rollingstock
low_grade
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Posts: 438
Joined: Sun May 17, 2009 3:02 pm
Location: Cleveland, OH

Mogul and Camelback tweaks

Unread post by low_grade »

As always, back up your current mogul and camelback .lco and .car files to another folder so if you don't like these updates you can revert back.

As I noted in the Baldwin 2-6-2 thread, and as others have noted elsewhere, it seems like I hardly ever use the Shay, and there's really no other stand-out engines in the medium grades after the Consolidation until the Mastodon or 2-D-2 or P8 depending on where your scenario is set. I think the Mogul 2-6-0 and Camelback 0-6-0 are supposed to be versatile little trains most handy in middle grades, but I hardly ever use them currently because they really aren't that good. The Consolidation continues to outshine them pulling long trains, and the Duke is better at short trains in the middle grades. And if you can't avoid lots of 6% or steeper grades, you go with the Shay or run a Consolidation with 4 or fewer cars.

So I boosted the Mogul's power constant, and I both boosted the Camelback's power and dropped the weights of it and its tender. The results are modest improvements in performance, nothing to get too excited about, but now the Mogul is a logical choice for several applications: pulling long trains on flat track over long distances if you're not in a hurry, pulling long trains through medium grades (my modded Duke is still better with shorter trains in the medium grades, not sure any more if the standard Duke would be better, too), and for pulling any train through tough grades, if you prefer to avoid the Shay. The Camelback, 10 years later, becomes the logical choice for the same applications, though the modded Mogul will be slightly better still pulling long trains short distances in tough grades due to its better acceleration.

Unfortunately, I didn't feel comfortable improving these engines to the point where they would remain better options in their specialties when the Baldwin 2-6-2 becomes available in my game. It's pretty tough to get engines just right, so that each engine shines in its own time in its own way. Any further improvements and these engines would have become better than my modded Duke or Ten Wheeler on flat track, which would have been contrary to the intentions I had in modding them.

Part of my philosophy for modding these engines is that not only should most engines shine in their own time in their own way, and not only should performance improvements be a more or less smooth continuous curve from locomotive to locomotive within a specialization class, but improvements shouldn't be so dramatic as to justify the wholesale replacement of every previous locomotive whenever a new locomotive becomes available. Maybe a few key engines here and there, but for the most part, I'd like to be able to keep my old engines until they see 10 years in service or more. This is to a large extent an aesthetic preference, I know: I just like the idea of having a variety of engines in service. But it is also a historical fact: trains did see service for 10-20-40 years and more, despite the continuous introduction of engines with design improvements, so that every railroad company had a broad mix of engines at its disposal at any point in time.

In this spirit I just reconsidered the Consolidation and come up with the following tweak: I increased top speed to 48mph and reduced cost to $100K. I think it's now slightly more competitive and will have a little more staying power.
Attachments
consolidation loco.zip
(217 Bytes) Downloaded 247 times
Camelback Loco.zip
(1.17 KiB) Downloaded 266 times