1/ The drivetrain components are a pig's breakfast. Piston, connecting rod and coupling bar graphics are all over the place.
2/ The wheels are too large in diameter, so poke up past the running boards and cab floor.
3/ The frame plate graphics are too far out, so interfere with the wheel graphics.
Stuff inherited from the default Connie, which has always bugged me, includes:
4/ There's a gap between the cab front and its roof.
5/ The bell totally sucks.
6/ The lens surround on the headlight is very prominent and very blocky.
7/ Ditto for the smokestack.
8/ Default Connie wheels are set so wide they are off the track. This is due to 3/ above. They modelled the frame side plates as part of the running boards, and the running boards are wider than the track, so they pushed the wheels out sideways.
9/ I don't like the way the front truck and tender bogies are fixed graphics. I can always tell they are just skidding along the track.
10/ All wheels are just one layer, which looks a bit insubstantial.
11/ No backhead detail.
12/ The coal in the tender looks a bit crappier than it needs to.
So I've fixed all of that. Drivetrain is all in shape now. Wheels are back to the right diameter and spacing for a Mogul. Body length has been shortened slightly to suit. Frame plates have been split off from the running boards, and set to the correct spacing. Running boards have been given an edging too, just because I could. Cab front now fits the roof. I imported the bell from the Atlantic (much better) and remapped and reskinned it to suit the Mogul. The headlight lens surround and the smokestack are now 12 sided instead of 6, which looks a lot better and didn't cost any extra tris (coz I got cunning). All wheels are now actual wheels, with some thickness to them. Also have backhead detail. Along with several other minor tweaks to work with all of this. For instance, the cylinders and drivetrain components went closer to the centreline, to match the new position of the wheels.
I still have a couple of things to fix, due to bugs I introduced myself. Since the skins for this new Mogul are so close to the default Connie skin, I figure I should make them so they can be dropped onto either loco. Extra Connie skins for no more work sounds good to me. The catch at the moment is I added the new backhead details to the cab front, keeping it within the boiler so you can't see it from outside, but the default Connie mesh uses that area for the cab floor. Result is that the crew would be firewalking.
Also, when I added backhead detail I remapped the cab floor (originallly part of the cab front graphics) to another part of the skin. Then I recoloured it to make a better cab floor. Unfortunately I forgot that bit was being used for the smokebox support, so that now looks a bit off, as seen in the next shot.
Fortunately there's a spare bit of space which isn't being used for anything at all, so I'm going to use space that to make a new backhead for the Mogul. This will require a couple of extra tris, but only a couple and only on the highest LOD anyway. The cab floor can then go back to being mapped to the lower central section cab front, so it will work with the default Connie, and the area for the smokebox support can then go back to its normal colour, which will work with everything.
So where am I at? I've done all the LODs for loco and tender. The only thing left to do on the mesh is remap the cab floor and backhead, which I'll do tonight. The whole lot can then be exported to .3dp's and it should all work. Since I've made three new skins for this beastie I figure I might as well release the whole lot at once, so that's what will happen: deborked Mogul, with three choices of skin, for Christmas.
The railroad company names are mythical, so they aren't tied to any one area. Each skin has different road numbers. Since the PSD layers for all of this are set up ready to go, doing extra colours/company names/road numbers is a piece of cake, for either the new Mogul or the default Connie. I'll make the PSD available too, in case anyone wants to play with it.