DanMacK wrote:... I'm designing the locos to be slightly more "North American" ...
For Arctic setting yes. For temperate - please no. The originals were British locos for a reason (ok hysterical raisins). If people want to load a newgrf of US locos, they still can.
In fact, I wonder why we are even looking at designing new loco graphics. We should really be asking Pikka or other great artists for permission to use their existing locos within an OTTD distribution. (Replacing the specific locos in the original sets, not overwriting the unliked (eg. monorail) with alternative choices.)
Incidentally, as part of my NewGRF_ports development, I have already created a "Load Mandatory NewGRF" function, so a vehicle set could stay coded in its original newgrf file, and it then gets force-loaded on New game or Load. (Yes, you can subsequently unload it.) I use this for a mandatory load of the basic airports. This would be ideal for tropical and arctic sets.