Alright, if anybody has a calculator handy you'd see that something was amiss with that 143-car test run I made out of Laramie. With the tractive effort the Big Boy was putting out you'd see that the numbers don't line up. The loco was acting like I was towing 3159.383094107491 tons. I honestly don't know how to account for that. Maybe a blueprint didn't load properly when the QD scenario started? I don't know.
The reason I bring this up is because I ran the test again, this time as a free roam scenario coming out of Cheyenne on the Harriman line. With the exact same train I was struggling to make anywhere from 16 to 18mph. This troubled me seeing as it stood in stark contrast to what had just happened coming out of Laramie, so I checked the numbers, reset, and the same thing happened. I ran the test out of Laramie as a free roam instead of a QD and once again I was struggling to get anywhere from 16 to 18mph. I still cannot account for why I was so easily making 40mph up the grade on one test and suddenly dragging my feet in the next test. The only explanation I can give is that perhaps the blueprints did not load correctly.
I took some time off to familiarize myself with the new Raton Pass route. It has plenty of good stuff, but I'm still conflicted about how I feel about it (nice range of freight cars but none of them bear any ATSF marks which looks a bit off and makes it look generic, the locos have way too much horsepower so they accelerate much too quickly, the semaphores have only 2 animation frames which change instantly, despite the signals clearly being 3-aspect they only display either green or red, the superliner Trans-dorm car is
NOT a Trans-dorm car but looks exactly like a regular sleeper, the scenarios aren't exactly the most thrilling things to play, the dynamic brakes are too powerful which can result in a lot of BS drive quality penalties, and sure modelling 45 miles of 3.5% grades in the mountains shouldn't be anything to sneeze at but it would have been nice to go all the way to La Junta to recreate a full shift and take more advantage of the so-called "high-speed" aspect of this route but hey we got some nice ATSF Dash 8s, articulated trailer flats and Amtrak MHCs at least) and also I needed a break from running the Big Boy.
Work continued today. The freight stock has been re-weighted to the following specifications:
The boxcar now has an empty and a loaded variant, weights 49t. and 131.5t. respectively (based on Union Pacific's specs)
The hopper also has an empty and a loaded variant, weights 35.1t. and 131.5t. respectively (based on what's printed on the side of the car in-game)
The double stacks also have 2 variants, the first variant replicating two empty 53-foot containers and the second variant replicating 2 loaded 53-foot containers, weights 35.85t. and 92.45t. respectively (based on intermodal specs for 53-foot containers and the tare weight of a husky stack car)
The caboose now weighs 27t. (based on a museum article centered on an extended-vision caboose)
I made just the most minute of changes to the Big Boy's physics and I can get the 7657-ton intermodal up the grade somewhere in the 20s now which I'm happy to accept.
My next step with this mod is to now replicate the 4884-2 class of Big Boys. Union Pacific had 2 classes of Big Boys, the 4884-1 and the 4884-2. Both classes were pretty similar but the 4884-2 class, being built in the middle of WWII, were heavier due to restrictions in building materials and steamed differently than the earlier 4884-1 class and their tenders were slightly modified to carry more water and slightly less coal. These will present a different driving experience due to their different power-to-weight ratio and different steaming characteristics. How much different? I won't know until I try it
Again I assure you guys that the K4s mod will be released before this latest Big Boy mod is released. This latest mod with the Big Boy serves as a proof-of-concept mod for some of the ideas I've been tossing around for the last year or so which will serve as a guide to what needs to be done with the K4s (I left off during the speed trials I think...). I'm thinking as a K4s never actually hit 100mph with a train and the fastest speed recorded was 91mph with a 1000-ton test train on a descending .51% grade that setting an absolute top speed of 100mph for the K4s light engine should be appropriate based on the loco's 80-inch driving wheels (later eras have to take into account better balancing, streamlining, and the application of roller bearings all of which yielded higher top speed). We'll see how that translates to practical every-day performance once I get there.
Oh yeah and then I read somewhere that the SP AC10-12 classes actually had a top speed of 63? I'll look more into that.