I've made a start on putting the double Shay together. Should be able to get it running tonight. I'm leaving passenger appeal, top speed and reliability the same, doubling purchase price and pulling power and free weight, and also increasing acceleration by one notch (seems to make sense if there's two of them hauling).
The only other necessary change is to maintenance cost. I'm not sure if I should just double that (ie: $30,000/year) or have it a bit less than that (like $20,000 or $25,000 or whatever). With the poor fuel economy, and with the maintenance cost being such a high proportion of purchase price, the game's Shays may be cheap to purchase but are not particularly cheap to run. $30,000 annual maintenance, when new, seems a bit much for a loco which only costs $80,000 to buy. If I bought a car or anything else brand new for $80k, I sure wouldn't expect to have to spend $30k for the first year's maintenance.
Maintenance costs this high also mean that replacing the locos when they are 5 years old becomes the most economical strategy. With the Shays having good reliability they will keep running well for 20 years but, due to the way maintenance costs escalate with age, keeping them longer than 5 years will cost you more money. The only advantage of the good reliability in practice is that for the 5 years they are worth keeping they shouldn't break down at all, even with maximum loads and no caboose.
The other thing I may do is change the start and stop dates. Since cargo car weights double in 1900, it may make sense to introduce the double-header Shay in 1900 too. End date could also be extended a bit.
I had a thought about a possible scenario to specifically make use of these things. Given the way Shays were generally used in practice, one option would be to make a map that deliberately had very steep grades in the logging (and possibly mining) areas, with normal or flat grades in the rest of the map. This would mean that Shays become the logical choice for the logging/mining operations even if other locos are available. You'd just naturally want to use Shays in the hills and Pacifics or whatever on the flatter country.
There could be a logs/pulpwood haulage quota to make sure the Shays really were used. If this was done on a revenue to/from territories basis, and if the territories up in the hills only contained logging camps, then a revenue quota would automatically make you haul logs and pulpwood down to the mills and would disallow bait-and-switch and also disallow hauling at a loss. This may not be required though, since if you're restricted to a starting territory that only has timber for business opportunities you'd have to haul logs anyway.
If doing a logging scenario, the usual way of doing it was to throw down very cheap and rough track to the new cutting area, making use of the rails that had been salvaged from the old cutting area. They didn't just lay tracks and leave them. They pulled them up when an area was cut out and re-used the track where they needed it next. This could be simulated by event coding. Have the logging operations in set territory, and reduce track laying costs in that territory. Also have events that randomly create and destroy groups of logging camps at intervals, to simulate areas being logged out and new areas being opened up.
You could also have events to check for track units, to promote re-laying of track. For example, you could have a maximum number of track units allowed in logging territory, so that you had to demolish your existing track to get any allowance to build track to the new logging area. When you demolish your old track, you get half its cost back in cash. This would simulate the re-use of old materials. Obviously these options are not the only possible way of handling things, but it could be an interesting exercise in event coding and provide something different in the way of gameplay.
Provisional idea is to set things up so you start with your little wild hogs and moonshine logging railway up in the hills, and have to gradually extend your operations by taking over AI companies that have access to the Big Smoke. AI companies could themselves be restricted to set territories so that you have to get them all to meet the game goals, and can't pull tricks in their territories before you merge them.
Just as an idea.
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