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Old 02-23-2021, 06:30 PM
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Tegyrius Tegyrius is offline
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Default Rail Power

I'd heard this story anecdotally from a railfan friend and it recently surfaced in my social media feeds again. Emergency use of diesel locomotives to provide electrical power after a 1998 ice storm in Boucherville, Quebec:

https://gizmodo.com/that-time-a-cana...d-d-1846307148

https://www.thedrive.com/news/39378/...utal-ice-storm

The second article provides links to a couple of rail forum discussions with more technical information on how to accomplish this.

While I don't see this being viable in most locales circa 2000, it may have been a stopgap measure used in late 1997 or early 1998 - immediately after the nuclear strikes, when diesel fuel reserves were still a thing. This could result in PCs encountering a (damaged, stranded) locomotive in a very unexpected place...

- C.
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Author of The Pacific Northwest, coauthor of Tara Romaneasca, creator of several other free Twilight: 2000 and Twilight: 2013 resources, and curator of an intermittent gaming blog.

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Old 02-24-2021, 05:32 AM
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I see your trains and raise you....
https://www.busaustralia.com/forum/v...dMRTs-Gkw6y8hw
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/a...lwOJWog39XjXiL
https://www.bluestarline.org/hinemoa...Y267ZtGaO0Bnkg
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Old 02-24-2021, 08:00 AM
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I suspect they may be in use in many areas still in 2001 - if you have oil being produced they could easily still be used to generate power - and per the canon there is still oil being pumped and refined in many areas of the country - and easier to maintain a diesel locomotive to generate power than try to bring a power generating facility back online
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Old 02-24-2021, 04:22 PM
Vespers War Vespers War is offline
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For the MLW M-420 that CN used in Boucherville, it was run on Notch 3 and produced 375 kilowatts of power at 60 Hz. Larger diesel-electrics like the SD40-2 can crank out around 1 megawatt when working as generators. The UP allegedly still uses their locomotives as generators fairly often for towns near their shops, but I don't know any technical details.
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Old 02-24-2021, 07:14 PM
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Past a certain point, the technical details are irrelevant for our purposes, insofar as we're playing Twilight: 2000, not Diesel Power Engineering and Frothing Railfans: 2000. This is something that, once its feasibility is known, can be reduced to a series of Mechanics/Electronics/Civil Engineering rolls at appropriate difficulty, with missions to recover appropriate technological MacGuffins from the Bad People.

- C.
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Clayton A. Oliver • Occasional RPG Freelancer Since 1996

Author of The Pacific Northwest, coauthor of Tara Romaneasca, creator of several other free Twilight: 2000 and Twilight: 2013 resources, and curator of an intermittent gaming blog.

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't.
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Old 02-25-2021, 07:54 PM
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I was under the impression that knowing fuel consumption and power generated might be useful in a game about scarce resources. I stand corrected.
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