The Coal & Power Update

◄ Update 230130
Update 230324 ►

**The Coal & Power Update** is a major update to Railroads Online, adding new locomotives, freight cars, facilities, and a new fuel type - coal. It was released on March 12th, 2023.

## Notable Features

### New Locomotives

* Cooke 2-6-0 (Firewood)
* Cooke 2-6-0 (Coal)
* ET&WNC 2-8-0
* Mason Bogie Tenmile
* Ruby Basin 2-8-0T

### New Freight Cars

* Coffin tank car
* Stock car
* Dump car
* Skeleton log car

### New Facilities

* Coaling tower
* Engine shed
* Kanaskat water tower
* 1870s water tower

### New Mechanics

* Coal - coal may now be used as a fuel type for certain locomotives.

## Official Post

*(The post can be found here)*

**Dear Community,**

it's finally here: Welcome to **The Coal & Power Update**, now available for download!

We are moving ahead at full steam (ha!), introducing brand-new mechanics, new locomotives, new facility buildings, new freight cars... plus bug fixes and improvements.

### Locomotives love their coal!

As mentioned previously, we are introducing a bunch of brand-new locomotives which are fully powered by coal. Note: Existing engines will *continue* to be powered by the mighty magic of wood.

During our brainstorming sessions, we came up with a lot of engines that could make their way into the game. Of course, your feedback played a valuable part in that process, ultimately leading to the selection of fan favorites.

With The Coal & Power Update, the following locomotives will join Railroads Online:

* Cooke 2-6-0
* ET&WNC 280
* Mason Bogie Tenmile
* Ruby Basin 2-8-0T

They will not come alone, however: New freight cars are also making their way into the game. Say hello to the Dump car, the Stock car, the Skeleton car, and the Coffin tank car!

### Coal & Power

The new locomotives – we just want to repeat ourselves here – will all be powered by coal... hence leading to the name of this update. Must be a total surprise, right? Right? Right...? Right.

We explained the new mechanics with the last blogpost but here's a reminder how things work: We're adding a new facility building, the coaling tower, that is essential for the workflow. As is the case with other facility buildings, you can place the coaling towers wherever they suit your needs.

What does a coaling tower need? You won't believe it: Coal! The coaling towers are empty once you place them, meaning that you have to create a supply line from the coal mines to the coaling towers to fill them up by using the coal hoppers. Use the attached chute to put some fresh coal into the tender of your engines and shovel them right into the firebox!

If you are burning through too much firewood, good news: Using coal is much more efficient.

### Other new buildings

That's not all, though: You'll receive a new engine shed. The Kanaskat water tower. The 1870s water tower. AND EVEN A NEW 3-WAY STUB SWITCH! Put your hands up in the air to celebrate 🙌

### Steam Spring Sale 2023!

To hype up the new update, we will put Railroads Online on sale from March 10 to March 23.

From **March 10 to 16**, so a few days before the actual Spring Sale starts, you can save 20% when purchasing the game – and there has never been a better time to do so. With the start of the Steam Spring Sale which runs **until March 23**, the discount will be reduced to 10%. The early bird catches the worm!

And here are the final patch notes:

## Official Changelog

### New Content

* Added new fuel type and firing mechanic coal
* Added new facility building: Coaling tower
* Added new facility building: Engine shed
* Added new facility building: Kanaskat water tower
* Added new facility building: 1870s water tower
* Added new switch: 3-way stub switch
* Added new locomotive: Cooke 2-6-0
* Added new locomotive: ET&WNC 280
* Added new locomotive: Mason Bogie Tenmile
* Added new locomotive: Ruby Basin 2-8-0T
* Added new freight car: Coffin tank car
* Added new freight car: Stock car
* Added new freight car: Dump car
* Added new freight car: Skeleton log car

### Gameplay

* Fixed collisions for sand house
* Fixed collisions for firewood depot
* Fixed collisions for freight depot
* Fixed collisions for coal mine building
* Fixed a but that caused the crane to restart after being deactivated
* Fixed a bug that caused the box car to not be auto-loaded with tool boxes at the iron works when placed on a rail without groundwork
* Updated radius accuracy for spline curves in circle-mode (Special thanks to FakeNeo)
* Updated morse code
* Fixed incorrectly loaded link meshes

### Locomotives

* Fixed incorrect Eureka whistle animation
* Fixed incorrect Eureka regulator outline
* Fixed a bug that caused the Eureka open cab windows to flicker at certain angles
* Fixed locomotive doors hanging in the air
* Fixed couplers of shay locomotive
* Fixed a bug that caused the Tank car brake wheel texture to be scrambled when changing the paint style
* Fixed a bug that caused long strings of characters to exceed the shape of the locomotive
* Fixed a bug where the Mosca drawbar won't decouple from glenbrook tender
* Fixed a bug where the Class 70 wood load mesh overhangs tender
* Fixed a bug where the Class 70 tender marker light doesn't connect with tank body
* Fixed a bug where the Class 70 headlight shelf & bracket are oversmoothed
* Fixed the Class 70 tender tank lid
* Fixed a bug where caboose and waycar did not carry any firewood
* Fixed a bug where trucks would twitch during travel
* Fixed a bug causing the cylinder drain lever to not play animation on client

### UI

* Updated Railroads Online logo in the menu (it's the new one, yay!)
* New backgrounds for main menu
* Fixed a bug where the mouse cursor disappears from the construction menu after ingame main menu is opened and closed
* Fixed a bug where the languages portuguese and simplified chinese can not be assigned
* Fixed a bug where the rolling stock is not deselected after rerail menu is closed via opening the construction menu
* Fixed the tutorial description of buttons
* Fixed a bug where the tender configuration will not refresh when changing to a different locomotive in the buy menu
* Fixed rerail UI overlapping with interaction UI
* Fixed lack of tooltips to train controls
* Fixed a bug where the map is overlapping with locomotive buy menu
* Fixed a bug where the Montezuma is listed as tier 2
* Fixed incorrect client rotation in purchase menu

### Graphics

* Updated season to spring
* Fixed flickering water fall water mesh
* Fixed a bug where the vehicles can be entered from any distance in 3rd person view

### Crashes

* Fixed a crash to desktop after changing texture settings