Patent ID: 7302895

Claim:
A configurable railroad locomotive having operating characteristics that may be selectively chosen to correspond to a mission objective of the locomotive comprising: a computing device carried on the locomotive; a plurality of locomotive operational input devices in communication with the computing device for generating operational signals for transmission to the computing device; a plurality of end use devices on the locomotive controlled by the computing device for performing locomotive operations; a configuration input device in communication with the computing device for generating a configuration signal different from the operational signals for transmission to the computing device; a first set of instructions accessible and executable by the computing device to control the end use devices in a first mode in response to the locomotive operational input devices when the configuration signal has a first value for establishing a first set of operating characteristics of the locomotive, and a second set of instructions accessible and executable by the computing device to control the end use devices in a second mode different than the first mode in response to the locomotive operational input devices when the configuration signal has a second value for establishing a second set of operating characteristics of the locomotive different from the first set of operating characteristics; further comprising instructions executable by the computing device to provide fuel to all cylinders of an engine of the locomotive when the configuration signal has the first value and to provide fuel to less than all cylinders of the engine of the locomotive when the configuration input has the second value.