I set the first locomotive to dual traction mode and left the second one in solo mode. The engine speed on the second locomotive increased.
What's worse is that the scenario is otherwise really good. Never have I ever felt more immersed and like a real driver than when I shunted that big train together being guided by radio messages. Only caveat apart from the bug that makes it impossible to complete, in my eye is lack of localisation. Sure, the Czech language is the only appropriate one for the route, but since a translation appears only in text boxes when the HUD is on, you can't really drive it HUDless if you don't speak Czech. Now SimRail handles this issue better as it does at least provide English audio output for radio traffic, with a heavy eastern European accent, but that preserves the origins in my view. Also for shunting you shouldn't get less points because you correctly set the LVZ to shunting which basically disables it's alerter function. Same goes for the German shunting operations without PZB and LZB btw., it shouldn't let you not score enough points since it's prototypical.
And everything worked for me... It would be nice to hear an official answer from the developer on how to do it correctly.