DE2 Load Testing - Derail Valley Simulator 

Holy cow, you're using the gradient map I made! (i'm Clipper Northern) You've made me so happy! Great video, Squirrel, thanks for making!

One thing to keep in mind is your amps. The traction motors don't really start generating heat until they draw about 400 amps, then the heat curves up sharply from there. On the other side of that, if the draw is less than 400, the motors will cool regardless of speed or throttle.

I'm obsessed with this game. They nailed it.

For realistic driving I'd prefer having a table showing sustainable tonnage for each gradient. Which should be in the operating manual for every locomotive.

Started playing this week and I’m obsessed

would love to see the rest of the trains tested similarly

I stay around the 280-290 ton limit with the DE2. That gives me some flexibility if the weather turns and I can generally make it to my destination without having to worry about it.

I've not tested the DE2 much, but I did successfully haul almost 1500T with a single DE6 a few days ago. Picked up two jobs from Oil Well Central and really gave it the beans. I went through the Steel Mill 3.3% curve at 55km/h and the train wasnt happy with me. I was going 3-4km/h at one point before picking up speed again.

A good rule of thumb, 150T per axle. (So the DE2 would have a 300T limit) This works pretty well for me on grades up to about 2.5-3, It does vary by train a little bit, DE2 I stay conservative below 300T per unit, the DH4 I may do 175T per axle, as the DH4 has great cooling capacity. DM3 different story again, I say maybe 150T per axle or less, as shifting can cause momentum loss.

6 of them can haul a pretty hefty load of around 1-1.2K tons from the harbor 🤣

As someone who drives with 200% repair cost, this lil mission of getting over the gradient while pushing to yellow and red temperature would cost over 75k for sure.

I would love to see what kind of load you can pull from the harbor when it rains, because at least for me it seems to rain almost all the time, so tracks are always wet.

For me , personally, the game peaks with 2 diesel hydraulics running in multi. Can pull almost anything, love the cab lay out, good visibility. Love it.

--Another method I've used to get out of the harbor is to tackle the first 2.4%, get past the points, then back into the southern route. Cool down and take a run at the second hill. Helps a lot.-- Nevermind, you mentioned it, lol. I remember somewhere they said they were giving the map a little jiggle, straightening some sections and reducing the overall bendiness.

Been playing with the dm3 and figured out I can haul some crazy loads. It’s slow but it’s steady. About 8kms out of the harbor with 800 tons

Over in the AltFuture discord, many of us have done a lot of testing of stuff like this. The DE2 is capable of around 200T going west out of the harbor in dry conditions, 162T in wet conditions. Probably slightly higher when run optimally. The DM3… some people have reported in dry conditions, 1100T in 1-1 with sand, but you are going to crawl up the grade at 1-3kmh. The DH4, 1000T west out of the harbor when dry, about 750T in the wet. Two of them easily pull 1800T west out of the harbor in the rain. Now, the DE6… easily pulls upwards of 2000T in the dry, my personal experience is with two of them, two of them can take over 4000T out of the harbor in the rain, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was over 5000T, because you are reaching the point where the entire train is not on the grade at the same time, so only 2000T is on the 2.4% while the rest of the train is on 1.4%. The problem you end up having isn’t the ability to climb the hill with heavy trains, the issue becomes can you properly manage the brakes to handle descending grades.

Loving the update so far

so, if you take 2 DE-2s, and put the second DE-2 at 2 knotches of power and leave it there the entireway, you can make it out there with 560 tons with no sweat, it tends to work a little better if the secondary DE-2 is a pusher, as that lets you take the harbor 40 at over 50 do to the pusher effect making cars less likely to derail themselves

Here is a tip squirrel: I learned that if you pick up speed until like 30 km/h and then idle the engine for a bit to cool down the TM and also since there is so much momentum it hardly loses speed on the flat harbor and then as the TM gets to minimum temperature I start incrementally adding power and as it gets to maximum speed limit I punch it and since there is so little temperature and since it’s going fast it heats up but slowly and usually that’s enough

There is kind of a test area. The track SE of the harbor goes no where but up. I bet if you can reach the top you could reach anywhere on the map.

Great video! I found even 300 tons can be difficult with a single DE2 from steel mill to goods factory, the last slope up to the yard just eats all your momentum. Luckily it isn't quite enough to stop a hill start,, but you pretty much have to inch warm your way up with climbing a few meters, stop to cool, climbing again, etc. Also, I would love to see a video on a multi unit S282. I love the steam train and the idea of multiple ones for a long train is really enticing.

oooooh squrriel we defo gonna need more of this type of "how much load can what locomotive pull" videos, I think using the SH282 steam loco i was able to get 650 ton of oil cars (could be wrong about the weight) tons out of harbour but not in one clean run up the hill taking the northern route via the tunnel after the initial climb outta the harbour but i ran out of steam and had to roll backwards across the bridge south west of the harbour, back onto level terrain, charge the steam pressure to max and even then i barely made it

I tried to haul a 2000 ton load out of the steel mill going south up the first hill and no matter how much of a run up i couldn't make it. The front of the train made it up but the weight of the rest of the train was pulling me back down. Ended up just hooking 2 DE6s and made light work of it. I defiantly agree with you though saying that the fun part is finding out the limit of these trains and trying to push them to it.

Out of the Steel mill going to harbor is tricky for me with the DE2. The steel loads tend to be fairly heavy and you can't take much of a run up as there's a pretty steep gradient down on the NE exit as well. I haven't tried to pull towards Farm, turn around and run up over the bridge, that might be an option. Though coming from that direction you have to deal with a pretty sharp turn on a steep gradient which may eliminate much of the speed advantage you get from the longer run up... It'd be nice if there were a few passing tracks on the network. You could double a particularly steep hill if necessary... In principle you still can wiithout them if you place your loco in the middle of a train. That way you can uncouple the back half, push the front bit up whatever gradient is otherwise too steep, park the front half at the top and then go back for the back half. Especially from Steel mill to Harbor, where there's only one fairly short uphill gradient and a lot of flat or downhil bits, this might work nicely, albeit goofy looking and questionable safety wise. I havent tried it yet. You'd have to be very sure all the switches are set properly too if you run the train from the middle :D

Hope to see a series!! I love this game, and i love this small shunter!!

I had a load from FF to MF and I got stuck with DE2 right on the first hill because of overheating. So what I did was unlinking the last car, riding it back to the ff, taking another de2 and bringing them up the hill for to help. I then left it at two notches up the power and left it like that while operating the now cooled down DE2 on the front of the train. Quite an experience I have to say.

Nice job man, i tried the same climb and came to the conclustion that pulling 260t (300t with locomotiv) is the max i can get out of there. verry intresting that you showed nearly 400t to be possible, i would have lost that bet as i was sure that was impossible. I guess somewhen on the weekend ill go and try to reproduce that.

Hi! My intuition tells me that damaging the engine by having it in the red reduces its efficiency, forcing you to throttle down earlier. Also, I found that a 15kmh speed excess is still reasonable regarding derailing. I managed to have 300 tons climb up the long slope from the north farm by using excess momentum and keeping the engine temperature in the middle of the yellow part of the gauge!

I don't know how the DE2 deal with red temps but with DH4 you can push it further on red zone close to 115C. A tester guy from the Altfuture said on Discord that he tests the max load of locos in red temps at 110C. As a result he said DH4 can do 730T + 80T loco weight on any gradient on the map. And I was close with 720T + loco out from the Coal Mine which is the hardest climb on the map.

Speed doesn't seem to affect cooling of the traction motors. Theoretically you can squeeze the most performance by running at 119 degrees all the time. In practice, you know that 520 amps ish is the max you can sustain, and oscillate around 115 degrees. There is no point getting lower than 500 amps, there is a fixed amps to temp relationship. If you're almost burning and reduce a notch of throttle, and are at 520 amps, you know the TM will not burn, and even cool down.

I tried testing out this little guy along that shorter route you first tried between harbor and steel mill and I found out that with a running start helps out. But eventually I decided to give up and start constantly reloading the same save file over and over again because every time you reload it you get more engines spawn in and I did it until I had 6 of these things loaded in and I was able to take 18 steel rail cars to harbor …. Of course the maintenance bill was pretty high even with the manual license lol

Aww man. My first job with the DE2 was taking steel from the steel mill to the harbour, and it was a real struggle getting up the hill immediately out of the steel mill. Big run up then lot's of 'almost overheating the TMs to gain a few metres, breaks on, wait for everything to cool, breaks off and push the TMs to the limit, repeat' I wish I'd taken better note of the mass of that load :( I think it was a little over 400 tonne

Yeah, I struggled to find the balance between the locomotive type and the amount of cargo in Simulator on Realistic. What I ended up doing was to quickly advance to DM3 and keep on fighting the battle with the shifting on that weird loco. :) Once we get to DH4 it's smooth sailing.

I’ve been using the multi unit license with 7 or 8 of them hooked together and they pull pretty much anything I can throw at them.

I did FF to HB with the D2, it was sporty! Do not hesitate to stay in the red, it only trips if it has reached +120°C. Concerning the speed, at VM + 10 km/h it passes without problem.

You should come back to DV! New DE6-Slug, S060 Steam shunter, BE2 Microshunter, a massive DE simulation overhaul... Lots of new interesting things since this video!

Because of all the variables, I just use conservative ballpark values. 200-250t DE2, 500t for DM3/DH4, 700-800t for the steamer, and 800-1000t for DE6. Two DE6's back-to-back for the most confident hauls. I'm more into job management with as less moves as possible, practice by a lot of shunting jobs.

Tend to limit myself to 200T loads with the DE2. Found that was about the limit when I started and haven't really pushed beyond that. Struggled with a 700ishT load into Sawmill with the DH4 too. Planning to just run DE6's once I've hauled out of SM.

I spend most of my time in Simulator driving the DM3, and from my experience you are only really limited by traction. On a dry track, you can sustain about 450 tonnes up a 1% gradient. If it starts raining, you won't be hauling anything but empty cars up that hill. You can temporarily negate this issue with sand, but you will run out of it pretty quickly

Got 460t out of the harbor with a DE2. It's doable if you really abuse those curves.

I started playing this game maybe a week ago (June 2024) and I've fallen in love. I always was a train nerd when I was younger. I got my pc built earlier in May and was already watching hyce and his shenanigans on derail valley so I knew Id have fun. WELL I had some learning to do. I blew the TM breaker twice on the de2 because I was impatient then proceeded to struggle with shunting and dutch drops (don't ask). Overall this game is a nerds dream

Here's a funny solution. On top of many of those climbs, there's a track split or a triangle. And DE2 is a shunter, right? So several times after stalling on a climb, i did a heresy. Decoupled the train on place, split in (usually two) parts, pulled those parts up to such a split one by one, pushing them into the track am not going to use - to pass the loco past them and pick another part, then reconnected it there to continue. Some makeshift shunting job.

I've hauled up to 250-260T loads, but 9 out of 10 times I'm leaving the Harbour, it's raining. So lots of sand is used. Started using the DM3 for anything heavier, because I have no luck with the weather.

One thing i did, but breaks the immersion, is i "borrowed" another DE2 from the harbor, drove it all the way to my stuck train on the climb, attached it to the back of the train, put it to around 400 amp of power then hoped on all the cars all the way to the front locomotive where i would ramp up the amps and try to move the train. It worked, just had to constantly move across the train to keep both locos under control so none of them would overheat. This was before i had the multiple units license. Kind of a workaround that breaks the imersion too but it did the job for me :D

The hopping thing is also useful for mixed train mu. The dh4 takes so much more throttle that if you mu it to a de2 you're either wasting power from the mu or cooking the de2. I found it useful to hop between them to kinda use the de2 as an auxiliary engine. still blew up both engines in that climb though.

I personally limit myself to 260 tones simply because i find the time wasted backing up and getting run ups can usually be made back by shunting the job you just hauled. thus making you the same amount or more, faster. That being said i slogged a 380 tone train up to iron mine east with just a single DM3 on the non looping track. lmao took a good 50 mins but i made it, nearly derailed once on a switch that made me rail grind but reversed, powered on slow, and hill started it again. AND GOT THE TIME BONUS! Geared trains can haul some pretty knarley loads, albeit slow, but it can pull them! Good times!

For only my 3rd haul ever (very new to the game) 0:50 , I tried to pull 381 tons out of the harbor - didn’t end well. Even with a “healthy” running start, she blew up within the first 10 minutes. Couldn’t keep the pace up to keep her cool, and the more I tried, the hotter she got. Backed it off, and eventually came to stop after 5 minutes of 1.5 km/hr - very frustrated.

Wouldn't mind seeing Squirrel do another series like he was doing on Derail Valley Overhauled.

Thanks for doing the testing

Seriously an awesome game, been loving every second of it. S282 is my bread and butter right now, shes a handful but so much fun to learn how to drive.Something for the developer tho, an auto fireman for the easy difficulty, auto water for the mid, and full scale for the hard would be really nice, make the steam locos easier to manage for newbies.

I love just listening and falling asleep with these videos

My experience with the de2 involved me stalling on the grade that goes into the steel mill from the north and forcing me to bring out another de2 without multiple unit to pull it out. I was pulling 6 fully loaded scrap metal cars. That was about 320 tons

(Funny Derail valley story, plus technical issue resolved with devs help via discord complement) I had accident with the SH282, I was running out of water coming from oil central with about 1000 tons of oil cars, so i diverted to steel mill and dragged the cars up the gradient with me but i had a dumb dumb moment i'd left a shunter DE2 on the main line of steel mill and had no realised it, i manage to get down around 20-30 KM/H before impact, it was hard enough to shatter the windshields of the DE2, i only had about 1/3rd of sight glass left of water, after the impact the glass was empty.... now i'd not pulled up far enough down the main line when the impact happened, so i still had about 500 tons of oil cars hanging over the gradient leading down to the farm, now i split the SH282 off and bleed all of air from the Oil cars, they held in place and i used the Damage DE2 to move my wounded steam train for a service, i was having an issue, i could not get any water into the boiler of the SH282 i'd pranged, so i wanna say the devs are credit to their player base via their official discord, Zelback the guys name was helped me with this issue with not being able to get water back into the boiler of my SH282, i thought it was bug because water was draining from the tender and just not making it to the boiler.......Zelbach explained that it takes 3 full tenders of water if its completely drained. He got me on my way again.....now he's the funny part, my 1000 tons of oil cars had disappeared, i started laughing thinking probably despawned or something right, but i thought i better give chase, I found em frigging heading for city south west cos i'd charged ahead using the VR teleport feature and i frigging scrambled to catch up, funny part I was just about to catch up with them as they started rolling into city south west, i'd hopped out using the VR feature in a panic to get more brakes on the cars but i was faffing around so much and i heard my steam train chugging towards me at lightning speed "ooooh fck".....I end up causing the disaster and laying waste to city south west, result career over, 20 years in jail for stupidity hahahahaha best train sim of all time.

3:25 A suggestion... reverse the train eastward through the yard, and up the 1.4% gradient, for as long as it can handle it. Stop the train, let the engine cool, and then run it westward - now you have a 1.4% downward slope to help with acceleration, plus the straight run through the yard - would that work as a tactic to get enough speed up (with a relatively cool engine) for the harder 2.4% climb...?

Making it up from the food factory hump on the way to city southwest with a 300t+ load is near impossible with two of these in tandem unless you're leaving with a 60kmh or more speed and don't carefully manage temperature

Jumped from DE2 as fast as I could. DM3 can haul quite a bit even on steep hills due to gearing, can't really remember but maybe 500 or so. DH4 I had 30 km/h runup and stopped at the switch at the top of the steepest gradient west and north of harbor. Was able to hillstart after cooling down and continuing with 710 tons, but that was barely.

S282 can haul 1000t out east of harbour but runs out of water at the junction to IMW/CM and the loop down to food factory. Not for those unfamiliar with the route or the loco without pre simulator Zeibach's steam mod.

so with some tricks you can carry out 400T out of harbor, in perfect conditions. so 250-300T is sustainable tonnage, and maybe 200T in rain.

Whenever I look at jobs out of the Harbor, I look at the weight _knowing_ I'll have a long climb out of there, and so I don't want to push my loco. I never considered the long way though, I may do that more often now.

I was able to pull 800T out of the Harbor and made it to Steel Mill with a DM3 and DE2 attached behind it.

It would be nice to do this kind of testing with the other locos too

explains why the DE2 is just a shunter and not to be used as a freight hauler

i like the DE2 and if you put 3 of them together, they're about the same as one DE6. I like the changes they made to the steam engine's fuel consumption since before, it would inhale coal and one would need to continuously shovel coal in.

its very interesting seeing you maximize efficiency, i wonder if that technique you used has a name

I tried running 3 iron trains togherer, 1 long and 2 short. For this i used 2 steam engines to pull it, and i had to manage them by jumping back and forth between them. I got to the hill after the food factory then i got stuck. I think maybe i should try the same train with 2 DE6 and see how that works out.

Here's the awkward part, I just recently basically finished the career (Only high level hazard/military licenses left) but I didn't even know it can just chill at 105. I've always kept it below the 95.

I would say that this is a fantastic case for springing to get the DM3 license quickly; that locomotive does much better than the DE2 in the hilly portions of the map in my experience. Gear shifts give the transmission a brief cooling break, and it tends to keep much more consistent heat loading with throttle management.

oh yes the wiki max hauls are far off. Also would like to know if doubling up double the amount you can carry, as it doesnt feel that way.

I did my DE2 testing from the Food Factory heading westbound and found that it's only good for about 180 to 200 tons up that gradient. Even with a run-up, that hill is much more pronounced and quite a bit longer than leaving the harbor. I found that the DM3 could do 500t without issue, but you won't be moving quickly. I was able to get the DH4 up the hill with 750t, but that was pushing the limit.

All I know about hauling and weight is... If it is raining I am sleeping until it stops.

I'm really enjoying Derail Valley. I've currently got DE2, DM3 and DH4, and from them I really like the DM3. Of course the DH4 can haul a lot more, but feels too automatic. The DE2 I use for shunting work if needed.

when the traction motors start getting to like 100+ degrees the magic smoke comes and you get a light show at 120

i think Squirrel may discounted, it is nine cars he counted it off from second tank car as the first one 1:17 mark

I didn't test anything in that regard yet because i simply didnt have the time, but i think Rain has a big effect. I did a 240-250ish ton job with the DE2, and i did end up exactly the same way as your second test, stalling out on the bridge. Even with Sand from the get go. Now i admit that i am by far not the best driver, so i do admit to some degree of user error, but i am confident enough in my abilities that this shouldnt have been that big of an issue. Long story short, i ended up reloading a save from before i took the job, took a 170ish ton logistics job, and managed to finish it while still having to run the DE2 a bit on the spicy side up the canyon

There is a third way, at least for 2 DE2s: Get the remote control ASAP and link it up to the rear one. The only thing that is now rather annoying is that physics have an impact on the switches on the thing, so if it slides down and falls to the floor, all the $#!+ will be going off. But I did a lot of that early in Overhauled, before getting any licences that would increase my copay and/or reduce my time bonus. Was literally the first thing I saved up for. Also, it's more immersive than the cab hopping with the teleport... although you could walk on the things and just teleport over to the other one. But also worth mentioning, in Overhauled with the Zeibach mod you didn't have to back up the throttle the slower you got. Was possible to leave it in the 4th or even 5th notch there. And then there's the slightly cheaper ways, since the remote is 50k IIRC: Get the Diesel Money$hifter or the So6o ASAP. Especially the DM3 can pull a lot, albeit slowly. You'll literally be cerrping up those grades at

With momentum you can use up to 75% of the load with De2 Normally you lose 50% tensile load on the mountain

Well, I did an 800T Pull with 4 DE2’s from Steel Mill North heading to the Harbor. As you could expect, no problems lol

I just managed to take a 19 car, 934 tonne train to MF with the DH4 It was a bit wet and that horrible corner at CSW had me starting at 30kph for the final stretch. Was doing about 5kph with max sand to avoid slipping while coming into the MF yard. So probably would have been easier without the rain, but that was pretty much the limit of what the DH4 can do

yup I found out the hard way when simulator came out heading west out of the Food Factory that it can't do 400 tons anymore like it use to lol :D I had to roll back down into the Food Factory and get a running start. The license don't print the max weight on them anymore or I am missing something

And here i am looking at 150T and going "can't do that one" lol

The heat does not blow a breaker. The power will

2 DE2's is a nice middle ground for pulling loads but more engines than that and the maintenance costs get out of control. The DM3 is slow but pulls hard 600 tons to 790 with sand up a 2.4 hill. The DH4 so far has been a let down as it struggled to exit the harbor with a 900 ton train and even with a DM3 pushing at the back it was touch and go for a while.

I came back to it the other day after some months away. Started a new game. Tried pulling 3 flats loaded with steel sheet from the Mill to the Harbour. Pulled out of the Mill okay, but got to the 1.8 incline and the DE2 just stalled out. Whatever the Devs have done has really nerfed shit.

Please, make another video of this with DM3 and the others!

When will the regular episodes of Derail Valley Simulator begin

You plan on making one of these videos for each locomotive?

I hauled a 485 Tons cargo from Factory to Harbor using DM3. Needless to say I was going under 10 KM/h half of the way :D

I do 2-DE2 one in the front and one in the back for large loads and use the remote controller to control the other engine

great video Mr. Squirrel.

I've managed around 400 tons on this runto the SM in the DE2 on simulator, but she was in the Ketchup waaaay to much. On Simulation Difficulty it just murders your funds xD At that point its more about saying "Hey, I did it!" Than actually making money off it

Any thoughts on doing this sort of video for the other Locos?

FF East I stalled on a 230T load 3rd time did a run up from across the yard to make it.

I did the eastern climb in three of them with 14 tanker cars stalled then rolled on to that track that doesn’t go anywhere got a run up and absolutely owned the hill and was on my merry way 😂

has any said - we need a bigger train (engine) - class 47 or even a class 37

Or use the locomremote an pair it to the second loco and drive both from the first

This was awesome! Thanks much!

run 2 at the same time you can pull all the map .. up to 5-8 cars

I once MU'd together 6 of these things because I had 3 jobs that were going the same way and I'm too poor for the DE6

i have successfully hauled about 850 tons with a dm3 from steel mill to harbor

Im dont know trains or this game to much, but i guess you could to the second try with sand while u accelerate, so u can achive speed faster befor the climb?