Of all things in services that are random and/or unique, fuel is not one of them. That fact that every AC44 starts with 4450 gallons of fuel, GP38 with 1400, SD40 with 2900, Class 66 with 1,407.8 (and the others have no digital readout so I can't tell what they start at.) is not particularly immersive. For one thing, it seems odd that they all start at the same level, but it's not quite 100% full-it's just almost full. (Maybe to allow for refueling despite all of the fuel levels being the same?) And in real life, you are not going to see locomotives, not even in the same train (except maybe for DMUs) at the same fuel level at all, and rarely will that be almost full. Giving a bit of a random range to fuel levels in services (I would say down to no less than 30% or so, with around 70% being the most likely, but that depends on locomotive [big AC44s will rarely get super low on fuel]) would spice things up a bit and make services generally more believable and have a less structured feeling.
Save and load also resets other things...like weather. So if you plan to not do a full service, don't set custom weather.
I completely agree. It is quite unrealistic that all locomotives you drive have a full fuel tank. I'm quite sure that in reality locomotives with completely filled tanks are very rare and in general you'll sit in locomotives with fuel levels between 40 and 80 percent. A simulation of this feature would bring again a little bit more realism to TSW. Of course, fuel levels should be saved as well as weather conditions should. So, that's a really good suggestion.
My uninformed guess is that drivers are not responsible for fueling, so doing so could create an entirely new category of scenarios/activities not limited just to refueling, but including washing (already one activity available), moving engines in and out of repair areas, setting up both passenger and freight trains, etc. Judging from the number of comments I receive for my switching/shunting scenarios for TS, these kinds of activities would draw lots of additional players (buyers) to TSW.
Actually, there are some very interesting refueling setups out on the transcons that the train crew is a part of. With trains going across the whole country, you'll need to refuel midway through the trip, in which case you need a lot of fuel hoses at once, and to have the fuel station right on the mainline rather than hidden in a yard somewhere, because disconnecting the locomotives would just be an unneeded delay for a train that needs to keep going through. Now that setup in TSW wouldn't work...because the fuel is never empty enough to justify that. If you wanted to, you could do things like having certain services start with lower fuel than usual because that service is a long distance one that in real life had not stopped to refuel recently. And services where all the locomotives have closer fuel levels than usual due to all those locomotives getting refueled at the same time in real life. But if it were still entirely random with more structured fuel levels in very specific situations like the transcon there, that would still work out well.
