Steam Locomotive can operate without Tender

[Peter Newell]

Steam locomotive will still operate even when no tender is connected to it. This should not be the case.

[cjakeman (cjakeman)]

What do you think should happen?

Won't a real loco operate without a tender until it runs out of water?

In OR, does the injector actually fail if the tender is missing? In OR, does the injector fail if the water runs out?

[Peter Newell (coals-to-newcastle)]

If the tender is missing then there will be no coal and fuel to supply the locomotive, so whatever water is in the boiler, and coal in the fire is what the locomotive will run on. This means that both coal and water will be "exhausted" very quickly, and the locomotive will loose power. If the game starts without the tender, then there probably should be no coal or water in the locomotive at all.

Naturally a tank locomotive carries coal and water on the locomotive and doesn't require a separate tender.

OR powers down the locomotive if coal or water are exhausted.

MSTS catered for this with the parameter "IsTenderRequired". I am thinking of implementing this, but I am just trying to think about the impact for any recent OR only locomotives that may not have this parameter present.

[cjakeman (cjakeman)]

Agree with all this. If the driver uncouples his tender and drives off, he should get into trouble fairly quickly. I would prefer that behaviour over some block on driving without a tender.

If the loco does not have an explicit IsTenderRequired = true, can we look to the first wagon connected to the loco? If it is a tender and contains coal and water, that fuel becomes available.

We ought to deal with double tenders too (e.g. Big Boy and Flying Scotsman) by scanning along for a series of tenders. There was a recent request for exactly this.

[Peter Newell (coals-to-newcastle)]

#3785 - - fixed steam locomotive code so that if a tender is required, the locomotive must have one connected.

The code checks to see if a tender is present in the consist, and if one is not present it assumes that the locomotive is a "tender" locomotive. Thus the locomotive will have no coal or water supply available (fuel exhausted).

If it is a tank locomotive (no external tender) then the ENG file must have the IsTenderRequired flag set to 0 to allow locomotive to operate without a tender.