Hey everyone. Here we are in the belly of
Leviathan and today we're gonna learn
how to drive this complicated metal
beast. But before we do anything: I've
only just started to get familiar with
this locomotive myself, so this tutorial
is really based on what I know now after
like five days of reading the manual and
doing some test drives. But I can
guarantee you that if you follow my
instructions you will be able to drive
this locomotive and get it from A to B
and back, without it stopping or failing
or exploding in your face. So this video
is really meant to get you started and
after that you just need to practice,
which is what I'm still doing as well.
Okay so let's do this.
As you can see we have it on Expert mode
and let's first take a look at the most
important controls in the cab. If you
don't know how it works you can always
read the manual first..
 
but if you don't like reading manuals
you can also just stick around and watch
this video instead. Okay with this thing
here you control something called the
cylinder drain, the cylinder drain is
something you always have to open when
the locomotive has been stationary for a
while, because some of the steam has
turned into water again in the cylinders
and opening this drain blows out any
water, and steam as well. If you don't do
this you can cause a pretty serious
disaster, you can ruin the whole steam
engine if you don't let this water out
first. The sander, everyone knows what
that does, it helps to avoid wheelslip
and with this locomotive it's a very
good idea to just turn it on when you're
starting up the locomotive, because on
Expert mode you will almost definitely
get some wheelslip if you don't use the
sanders, and because we're going to drive
up a hill soon we can just leave it on.
You have enough sand for about two hours
and serious wheelslip will very easily
damage this locomotive. Next, you want to
open this front damper, you want to open
this one on the left called the front
damper when you're moving forward, and on
the opposite side of the cab there's the
rear damper and you open that one when
you're backing up. When you open these
dampers you add
more air to the fire in the firebox so it
gets hotter at a faster rate. You also
want to activate the blower, so first you
open this blower steam throttle, there we
go, and after that.. let's see here it is,
this is the blower, you open that
with pressing the N key. What the blower
does is it creates a draft through the
firebox, which helps to generate steam
more quickly, and it also prevents smoke
and flames from the firebox to blow back
into the cab... which would be kind of
unpleasant.
Then you sound too bell, just to make
everyone know you're about to start the
engine and drive away.
The whistle on this locomotive is
extremely important, because you use it
to communicate with the brakemen. The
locomotive itself doesn't have a brake
so instead you use this whistle to
signal the brakemen, who control the
brakes that are on the cars, or the
wagons. To release the brake you blow two
long notes close together and to
activate the brakes you blow one short
note. So I advise you not to play too
much with this whistle because you'll
probably end up activating the brakes.
And after that you release this
handbrake, which you can do yourself.
Then of course there's the reverser, also
called the cut-off, which controls the
valves in the cylinders and also the
gears, forward and reverse. They've
made this one so realistic that it's
actually kind of tricky to control it
sometimes, which we'll see later on in
this video. It's not difficult it just
takes time getting used to.
To start this locomotive you don't need
to put it at maximum forward, which is
75%. It'll get rolling if you put it in
for example 45% and that way you'll lose
less boiler pressure. That's what I do
anyway. And this is the throttle or
regulator, and this controls the amount
of steam that's send to the cylinders, so
both the throttle and the reverser
control the amount of power the steam
engine has or uses. If you're totally not
familiar with how steam locomotives work
you should perhaps first watch my video
about how steam locomotives work. I'll
add a link in the description here and
at the end of the video.
When you open the firebox of course you
start adding wood to the fire which
makes it hotter, which produces more
steam, and here you can move a log in the
firebox. You can move it up and down to
regulate how much fire mass you want or
how hot you want it to be. Okay now that
we're moving we can close the cylinder
drain again otherwise you're just losing
steam. This was actually the easy
part,
getting it moving, the most difficult
thing we're gonna do with this Leviathan
is climb a pretty steep hill. Actually
the part of the route we're gonna drive
here is only uphill, there is no downhill
on this part of the route, and we'll be
climbing a grade up to 2.2% which is
actually pretty steep considering that
in the U.S. they like to keep grades
below 1.5%, with anything above that they
often use two locomotives. So using this
single, 1868, pretty complicated, Leviathan
steam locomotive to climb a 2.2 percent
incline is basically asking for trouble.
Which is a great way to learn something
right?
Okay, you can see we're already climbing
now and there's a pretty drastic drop in
speed already, and if we want to prevent
a full stop
we now basically just have to put the
reverser or the cut-off in a higher notch.
And to do that we first have to close
the throttle and then change the
reverser, and then be quick to open the
throttle again so so we don't come to a
complete stop. You now see that the speed
is increasing again but at the cost of
steam pressure of course, so you have to
keep an eye on everything: you don't want
to run out of steam, you don't want to
run out of water, you don't want to come
to a full stop... so yeah it's really about
constantly finding that balance, so I'm
constantly switching between building up
some speed at the cost of steam pressure
and then building up some steam pressure
again often at the expense of speed.
This is the blowdown by the way, this
is merely a visual effect, it doesn't
really do anything in the simulator, it
just looks cool. The blow down uses
steam to clear the sludge that can build
up inside the boiler. Looks nice.
Anyway, we'll be driving pretty slow in
the hill climbing portions of this route
but sometimes it's best to drive slow,
stay in control and reach your goal in a
controlled way, and the thing with this
locomotive is that it's so realistic
that when you lose control even for a
couple seconds you will very easily end
up damaging it. Okay we now wanna...see,
I'm too impatient with this reverser so
it jumps back into 75% that's because I
don't wait long enough after closing the
throttle. The thing is, when you're
climbing you can't really wait very long
either,
because then you'll lose a lot of speed,
so I just want to reduce the reverser
a bit now to build up some steam again.
Leviathan was one of four identical
steam locomotives owned by Central
Pacific Railroad, the other three being
Jupiter, Storm and Whirlwind. Jupiter was
the most famous of the four, because it
was used during the Golden Spike
ceremony where they celebrated the
completion of the first Transcontinental
Railroad in the USA. We now have to add
some water to the boiler otherwise we'll
run out of water and then the engine's
dead. You can only add water to the
boiler when the engine is in motion
otherwise nothing happens. So first we
open these feedwater heaters.
These heaters preheat the water that's
being pumped from the tender into the
boiler, this improves the efficiency of
the system. Otherwise we would be adding
cold water to the boiler which has a
negative negative effect on steam
generation.
And after that you just open the water
valves.
Uou also have to make sure that you
open the feedwater pumps otherwise
nothing happens. You can check that
they're open, or doing their thing, when
you look outside you see that
there's water being being pumped out or
leaking out of the boiler and that means
there's water being pumped into the
system. You can see the same effect
on the other side of the boiler.
Oh yeah if you press F5 you
get this on your screen, which is all the
information of everything that's going
on. Some people prefer that info screen, I
don't, because I think the F4 HUD is much
easier to read than this, but that's just
a personal preference.
All these Old West DLCs are created by
Smokebox, All their DLCs are of very
high quality, very high details, they get
good reviews on everything they make, so
you can safely buy these. They're very
good and you'll learn a lot too. I've
learned really a lot about Old West
steam locomotives just from making this
video, so yeah it's really great stuff. Okay
we're almost at the next town now, this
is of course as always with all my
videos, a very edited version of the
gameplay recording to keep it nice and
short.
In reality it took me about, I think 45
minutes to reach this town and I did
about 5 test drives before making this
video. During the first three test
drives all sorts of things went wrong.
One time I managed to really destroy the
whole steam engine, I also managed to
come to a full stop right on the worst
2.2% inclination, so the locomotive just
started rolling back. So yeah if you're also
new to this locomotive, you will probably
experience something very similar the
first time you drive it up a hill, but
after that you'll soon do a lot better.
So don't give up, don't blame it on the
locomotive, or the developers or anything
This is a complicated, pretty realistic
simulation of the real thing, and it just
takes time to really master this
locomotive. I know I still don't master
it but
I'm doing a lot better than a week ago
and I'm actually having a lot of fun
driving this thing now and I'm feeling
sort of in control of it, so yeah it's
really a great machine, just if you buy
this, be patient and be willing to
really learn something and then you'll
do just fine.
Well I guess we did it. I need a drink
and I think it's pretty safe to just
leave the Leviathan here because nobody
here knows how it works anyway this is
1868, so there's no way they've seen this
tutorial on YouTube.
Alright, well thanks for the trip, Leviathan.
See ya!
